Over 100 German Universities Partner with MDPI in New National Agreement
More than 100 German universities and research institutions have entered into a national agreement with MDPI. The publication agreement negotiated by ZB MED comes into effect on 1 January 2025 and is valid until the end of 2026. Joining the consortium is still possible until the beginning of 2025. We are delighted by the high level of interest this agreement has already garnered, reflecting the strong demand for accessible and cost-effective open access publishing solutions among German research institutions.
This new cooperation aims to make scientific gold open access publishing more affordable and less administratively burdensome for researchers in Germany. The agreement includes substantial discounts on article processing charges (APCs) for corresponding authors from participating institutions. It offers flexible payment options, including centralized invoicing or individual payment of fees by researchers or their institutions. Additionally, the agreement features a flat-fee model that enables institutions to precisely plan expenses and optimize their library budgets.
"MDPI can look back on over a decade of successful partnerships with German research institutions," says Peter Roth, MDPI Head of Publishing. "The new agreement marks another milestone in the long-standing co-operation between MDPI and the German scientific community. It emphasizes our commitment to developing up-to-date and inventive solutions for the diverse needs of scientific institutions to promote open research for the benefit of researchers."
Petra Labriga, Head of Strategic License Management at ZB MED, highlighted the agreement's significance: "As one of the world's leading Gold OA publishers, MDPI plays a central role in the German publishing landscape. We are particularly pleased that we were able to achieve considerable potential cost savings for scientific institutions and their authors at a national level through our negotiations."
The partnership reflects a common goal of advancing the idea of open access and supporting researchers in making their scientific excellence internationally visible.
"We would like to thank the ZB MED consortium team for their excellent collaboration," added Adrian Stefan Zamfir, MDPI Institutional Partnership Manager for the DACH region. "We are delighted that this agreement will give even more researchers in Germany access to our tried-and-tested and reliable publication platform."
Franziska Fischer (right), Commercial Director at ZB MED, an Peter Roth (left), Head of Publishing at MDPI, celebrate the signing of the new national open access agreement between MDPI and the ZB MED Consortium.
More Information
Contact
- ZB MED: Team Konsortiallizenzen (konsortiallizenzen@zbmed.de) - Website
MDPI: Adrian Stefan Zamfir, Institutional Partnership Manager (zamfir@mdpi.com)
About ZB MED
ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences is an infrastructure and research centre for life science information and data. Its aim is to support and strengthen research for people and the environment: from medicine to biodiversity and environmental protection.
The work of ZB MED is orientated towards the strategic guidelines:
- Research + Networking: We conduct research together with the regionally, nationally, European and globally networked research community.
- Data science: We enable data analyses and generate new knowledge through research.
- Access to information: We provide sustainable access to information, literature and data as a central information infrastructure.
- Open + FAIR: We promote open and reproducible science in line with open science and FAIR principles.
- Knowledge and skills transfer: We actively impart knowledge, competences and skills.
More information at www.zbmed.de.
About MDPI
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, MDPI is one of the world's leading open access publishers with a current portfolio of more than 440 journals in all scientific disciplines. MDPI‘s goal is to advance open science worldwide through greater transparency, efficiency and collaboration. To date, more than 3.7 million researchers have published their results in MDPI journals. The editorial process is overseen by a large network of dedicated reviewers and editors and supported by more than 6500 MDPI employees. MDPI currently works with over 800 academic institutions and 180 scientific societies worldwide, which benefit from a wide range of MDPI services and products.