We are delighted to announce that Frontiers and the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren) have established an agreement entailing the inclusion of three new members of the Helmholtz Association in an agreement on open access publishing.

Building on an agreement established in 2015 comprising a consortium of then nine member institutions of the Helmholtz Association, Frontiers and the Helmholtz Association have now agreed on the expansion of this consortium to include three further member institutions. The new members are:

• The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., DLR),

• The Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR), and

• The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, AWI).

These three member institutions join the consortium, which since 2015 comprises the following institutions:

• Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, MDC)

• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, KIT)

• Jülich Research Center (Forschungszentrum Jülich, FZJ)

• Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung, HZI)

• Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)

• Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung, UFZ)

• German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen; DZNE)

• German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ)

• Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Center for Materials and Coastal Research (HZG) (now: Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon)

Furthermore, with the new agreement a new discount rate of 15% applies on APCs for accepted articles in any Frontiers journal by corresponding authors affiliated with any of the above listed 12 institutions. This discount is applied to the net APC, which is the APC which would otherwise be payable after deduction of any other discounts that may apply.

This agreement will further encourage Helmholtz Association authors to publish open access, benefiting scientific research and the public at large as well as supporting the goals set out in the Helmholtz Association’s open access policy, which include that by the end of 2020 60% of the publications from the previous year falling under this policy will be open access.

For more information on this agreement, please visit the FZJ library webpage or email Claudia Frick at c.frick@fz-juelich.de. For questions on whether your article is eligible under this agreement, please contact the respective institution’s librarian (contact details for the three new members can be found following the links given above).

Updates: Later in 2018 the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences (Helmholtz Centre Potsdam) joined the consortium agreement.