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Portland Press
As the Biochemical Society’s publisher, we work in partnership with researchers, institutions, and funders to share knowledge and advance the molecular biosciences.
Publishing world-leading research and reviews across our portfolio of seven journals, we return all of our profits to the life science community in support of our Society’s charitable activities. With more than six million worldwide article views in 2019 alone, our journals cover the depth and breadth of the molecular biosciences, from observational work to elucidating mechanisms, from translating basic research into medical insights to foundational overviews of new and emerging topics.
Our joint mission
Alongside the Biochemical Society, we represent one half of a joint mission to disseminate and advance science, to share knowledge and expertise, critically discuss ideas, and to provide forums for collaboration. Publishing the best possible research and reviews helps us to achieve this. Returning all of our profits to the Biochemical Society, we also help to facilitate their scientific meetings, training events, educational activities, public engagement and policy work, and awards and grants. Investing our profits back into the life science community, we are able to better support current and future generations of scientists, driving our research areas forward and promoting the positive societal impact of our shared disciplines to wider audiences.
Open scholarship and transitioning publishing models
For a long time, journal subscriptions based on paywalled content represented the best economic model to support the publication of bioscience research, spreading costs across institutional subscribers around the world and generating income to facilitate our Society’s charitable activities. In the interconnected and digital world of 2019, however, we believe that paywalls have become barriers to the process of sharing scientific research. Combined with our long-held endorsement of open scholarship, changes to open access (OA) mandates and policies have only reaffirmed our commitment to sustainably transitioning from paywalled research to fully OA publishing, evolving our policies and practices in line with the changing needs of the research community.
Read more about the changing landscape of academic publishing and how we’re making steps to continue to support, and generate investment for, the communities that we serve.
A refreshed agenda and the ‘open’ road
Our former Director of Publishing, Malavika Legge, announces the Biochemical Society and Portland Press’ joint commitment to commencing a sustainable and equitable transition to open access, describing early steps on our road to a more ‘open’ ethos.
Marking the first step to transitioning publishing models, we’re excited to launch a pilot transformative offering for ̴ 700 global subscribers. Active for 2020, our optional ‘Read & Publish’ renewal initiates a route to full OA publishing, providing an inbuilt solution to the burden of transacting individual article publishing charges (APCs).
We’re proud to form the Society Publishers’ Coalition alongside other learned societies and are working to maintain an open dialogue between publishers, learned societies, researchers, institutions, and funders as we look to co-develop publishing models for the future.
Open access: what’s all the fuss about?
Our former Policy and Public Affairs Officer, Hannah Macdonald, surveys the changing landscape of academic publishing in a post for The Biochemist Blog.
