PLOS Adopts Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink® for Scientific Communications to Manage New Community Action Publishing Model

Marks the First Pure Open Access Publisher to Implement CCC’s Market-Leading SaaS Platform for Institutional Agreement Management

DANVERS, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Public Library of Science (PLOS) announced today it is using RightsLink® for Scientific Communications (RLSC) to manage its Community Action Publishing (CAP) model, which aims to eliminate author APCs in order to make its Open Access (OA) journals truly Open to Read and Open to Publish.

PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine are the first two PLOS journals live on RLSC, the comprehensive scholarly communications workflow solution from Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a leader in advancing copyright, accelerating knowledge, and powering innovation.

RLSC is used by PLOS to deliver a flexible, sophisticated workflow that enables authors to easily publish OA, whether or not they are funded under a formal PLOS publishing agreement. PLOS can also leverage the agreement management capabilities of RLSC to support emerging OA models such as the University of California multi-payer model, where the university and author share responsibility for funding APCs.

“We want to ensure all authors have the same freedom in choosing the best venue for their research,” said Sara Rouhi, Director of Strategic Partnerships, PLOS. “PLOS’ Community Action Publishing changes the way we think about selectivity and authorship for a more equitable OA future. Key to this is a friction-free author experience that reduces the lift for authors around managing payments. RLSC has been critical to facilitating this.”

“We’re so pleased PLOS chose RLSC to support its new CAP model by automating the management, collection, and funding of manuscripts,” said Emily Sheahan, Vice President and Managing Director, Information and Content Services, CCC. “In partnering with PLOS on this important initiative, CCC helps provide the business modeling flexibility, scale, and automation required to support the needs of a growing community of stakeholders.”

PLOS recently entered into agreements with the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, premier higher education consortiums of top-tier research institutions in North America, for its members to participate in the CAP program.

CCC just announced new functionality for RLSC, including a capability to inform authors of available OA publication funding throughout the manuscript lifecycle, starting with submission.

RLSC enables publishers, funders, and institutions to support a variety of OA agreements. It accelerates the implementation of OA deals, including Read and Publish Agreements, Membership Deals, and more. Over 30 publishers rely on CCC’s sophisticated agreement management solution to serve over 800 global academic institutions, consortia, and funders – including Jisc, Max Planck and California Digital Library. CCC’s Open Access Workflow Services, a comprehensive consulting practice providing strategic OA institutional agreement workflow support, helps organizations deliver on each agreement’s unique needs.

CCC is an active partner in the information industry’s evolution of hybrid and pure Open Access publishing models. For years CCC has brought together key Open Access stakeholders from the author, publisher, institution, funding, and vendor communities through roundtables, panel events, webinars, podcasts, and published pieces. CCC is a member of OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association), ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers), STM (International Association of STM Publishers) and SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing).

ABOUT COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE CENTER

Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) builds unique solutions that connect content and rights in contextually relevant ways through software and professional services. CCC helps people navigate vast amounts of data to discover actionable insights, enabling them to innovate and make informed decisions. CCC, with its subsidiary RightsDirect, collaborates with customers to advance how data and information are integrated, accessed, and shared while setting the standard for effective copyright solutions that accelerate knowledge and power innovation. CCC is headquartered in Danvers, Mass. with offices across North America, Europe and Asia. To learn more about CCC, visit www.copyright.com.

About the Public Library of Science

PLOS is a nonprofit, open access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. Since our founding in 2001, PLOS journals have helped break boundaries in research communication to provide more opportunities, choice, and context for researchers and readers. For more information, visit http://www.plos.org.

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