Making universal access to research a reality

Making science open and accessible to as many people as possible is a priority for us. In 2023, we continued to build on our ‘open physics’ programme to make science more accessible, transparent and inclusive. 

Converting partner journal to become OA

We supported our partner, The Japan Society of Applied Physics to transition Applied Physics Express (APEX) to fully OA from January 2024. 

Transformative agreements

We continued to expand our portfolio of transformative agreements (TAs) to make it easier for authors to publish their research OA. Globally, the number of articles published under a TA in 2023 grew much faster compared to articles published OA outside of a TA. This demonstrates the effectiveness of these agreements to encourage greater uptake of OA publishing. At the end of 2023, 31% of our total OA journal output was published under a TA covering 981 institutions in 34 countries.  

Enhancing inclusion of researchers from lower-income economies 

We introduced a new policy to automatically waive all fees for authors from the lowest income economies, without any need for them to ask. We also put in place a significantly reduced, flat-rate article publication charge (APC) for OA publishing to authors from lower-middle-income economies. We are one of the only publishers to apply our waiver and discount policy to all of our journals, including hybrid journals.

• Researchers from 83 countries received APC discounts or waivers 
• Waivers and discounts were applied to more than 2,200 articles, totalling more than £1.5 million 

Waivers and discounts programme 

Making sure OA is available to all researchers is a priority for us. We support authors from lower- and lower-middle-income countries, by applying our discounts and waiver programme automatically to all IOPP-owned journals.

• Since the extension of the programme in July 2022, the number of OA articles published by authors from low- and middle-income economies has increased by 40%. 
• With the help of the discount and waiver programme, nearly 20% of accepted articles were from authors from low- and middle-income economies, up from 13.2% last year. 

Sharing data openly

We recognise the incredible potential of open science and endorse the STM joint statement on research data. Our journals have adopted progressive data policies, with all authors required to provide a data availability statement in their published articles.