The Company of Biologists joins OASPA

The Company of Biologists is pleased to announce that it has become a member of OASPA – the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association. The Company, a not for profit organisation, publishes two Open Access journals—Biology Open and Disease Models & Mechanisms. In addition, its three world-renowned subscription titles, Development, Journal of Cell Science and The Journal of Experimental Biology, allow authors to opt to pay a fee to enable immediate Open Access.

In joining OASPA, the Company aims to support OASPA's mission to represent the interests of Open Access publishers worldwide.

Biology Open Joins New Portable Peer Review Consortium

Biology Open has joined BioMed Central (BMC), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in a cascading (or portable) peer review consortium with eLife. Authors who submit to eLife and whose papers are not accepted will be able to choose to redirect their papers, with the referees' reports, to Biology Open or another journal in the consortium.

This new peer review initiative is broadly centred on the life sciences and does not focus on a single specialty, thus incentivising free flow between journals. This, in addition to Biology Open's cascade relationship with the Company's other leading journals, should help to increase the speed of publication and reduce reviewer fatigue for research deemed to be both sound and useful to the community.

Provided by The Company of Biologists