Five leading journals published by the Biochemical Society, by and for molecular bioscientists, will be published open access (OA) during 2025. They are:

• Biochemical Journal, Volume 482
• Clinical Science, Volume 139
• Biochemical Society Transactions, Volume 53
• Essays in Biochemistry, Volume 69
• Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, Volume 9

The move was unanimously endorsed by all members of the Portland Press Board, which is the wholly owned trading subsidiary of the Society. Following the collective action of libraries who renewed their annual subscriptions on the basis of the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model, the commitments on both sides enable researchers worldwide to publish in and read all articles with no scholar-facing fees.  This decision completes the Society’s OA transition, providing a compliant open access route for all papers which will publish under the terms of a CC-BY license.

This is the achievement of a long-term strategy. We made a pledge to create funder and institutionally compliant OA routes for all published articles to meet Plan S deadlines, and we’re proud to share we have achieved this through four OA pathways, Guaranteed OA (Read & Publish), Conditional OA (S2O), Article Publishing Charge (APC) only in a fully OA journal, and Green OA.

We’re grateful for the support of our community in helping to remove barriers of access to our research. Publishing surpluses are gifted back to the Society, helping to fund scientists through grants and bursaries, to subsidise events and training, to create opportunities for our members at all stages of their career development. Our mission is to achieve a rich scientific culture based on accessible and trusted research for the advancement of the molecular biosciences. 

Discover our path to OA