IOP Publishing joins OA Switchboard

As part of its ongoing commitment to open science, IOP Publishing (IOPP) is joining the OA Switchboard to make it easier for institutional customers to manage open access (OA) agreements. The partnership is aimed at enabling academic institutions and research funding organisations to monitor information relating to OA research outputs via a central information hub.  

Institutions and funders with access to the OA Switchboard will now be automatically notified when an OA article has been published in an IOPP journal or partner journal. This will improve the visibility of published OA research and enables institutions and funders to report on OA publication data from all participating publishers in one place and format.  

The OA Switchboard is designed to address the increasingly complex network of OA agreements between publishers and institutions, along with a rise in the number of policies developed by research funding organisations, which makes managing OA data difficult. IOPP’s OA journal output published as part of an OA agreement doubled in 2023 compared to the previous year.  

Julian Wilson, Chief Sales Officer at IOPP, said: “The OA Switchboard initiative supports us on our journey to make OA a reality by simplifying the sharing and reporting of journal information throughout the entire publishing process. It is OA infrastructure like this that really helps materialise open science.” 

Yvonne Campfens, Executive Director at the OA Switchboard, added: "We are delighted for IOPP to come on board and become part of the OA Switchboard which offers a one-stop-shop for information sharing among stakeholders, cutting down transactional costs for everyone involved while offering a secure environment for publication metadata. It is designed to operate and integrate with all stakeholder systems." 

The partnership will initially be applied for a year, after which the benefits will be reviewed to assess if further efficiencies can be achieved.