Max Planck Society and Brill Reach Agreement for Open Access Books and Chapters

Brill is proud to announce a new collaboration with the Max Planck Society on Open Access for books. Within this agreement, Brill offers a discount on the book and chapter publication charge for all affiliates of the Max Planck Institutes. Coordinated by the Max Planck Digital Library, 50% of the book or chapter publication charge is funded centrally. The other 50% of the Open Access costs are funded by the applicable Max Planck Institute. This extensive agreement covers not only monographs and edited volumes, but also individual chapters from Max Planck-affiliated authors to any Brill volume.  All 86 Max Planck Institutes are eligible, which makes this a landmark agreement for Brill and its German imprints Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, and Schöningh, Fink & mentis.  The agreement runs for three years, until October 2025. 

Dr. Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information at the Max Planck Digital Library, comments: "With this agreement we respond to the articulated demands of our researchers and offer a new opportunity to publish their research results in Open Access. We acknowledge the commitment of Brill to finding pathways to more openness in the system and are very pleased to collaborate with this distinguished publisher."

Dr. Jasmin Lange, Chief Publishing Officer, comments: "Max Planck Digital Library has always been at the forefront of the transition to Open Access. It is essential that such a key organization recognizes the need for extending Open Access to books and chapters. Monographs and edited volumes continue to be a vital format for dissemination of research in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Yet Open Access efforts have primarily concentrated on journals and articles so far, which puts at risk the visibility and impact of books and the fields that rely on them. Brill is firmly committed to accelerate Open Access for its book program and is delighted to partner with Max Planck Digital Library in delivering that."

For more information on this media alert, contact Stephanie Veldman, Head of Open Access at Brill, via Stephanie.Veldman@brill.com. For Brill's policies on Open Access visit the Brill website.

About Brill
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections. Commitment to Open Access and the latest publishing technologies are at the core of Brill's mission to make academic research available for the scholarly community worldwide. The company's key customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. Brill is a publicly traded company and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV. For further information, please visit brill.com.

About Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society conducts basic research in the natural sciences, life sciences, and humanities. Since its foundation in 1948, eighteen Nobel laureates have emerged from its ranks. The Max Planck Society with its 86 Max Planck Institutes and facilities is the international flagship for German science: in addition to five foreign institutions, it operates another 20 Max Planck Centers with research institutions such as the Princeton University in the USA, the Paris University Science Po in France, the University College London in the UK, and the University of Tokyo in Japan. Equally funded by federal and state governments, the Max Planck Society had an annual budget of 1.8 billion Euros in 2018. More information is available at www.mpg.de.

The Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) is a central scientific service unit within the Max Planck Society dedicated to the strategic planning, development and operation of the digital infrastructures necessary for providing its institutes and their scholars and scientists with research information, support for web-based scholarly communication, research tools and research data management and software licensing.