MDPI strives to make the transition to Open Access publishing as seamless as possible through Institutional Partnerships, providing support and guidance for libraries, institutions and authors. This includes providing an Open Access publishing model that offers flexible agreements and a wide range of benefits for both researchers and institutions.

The Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) supports institutions and consortia by providing simplified solutions to complex administrative processes. If you would like to read more about the IOAP, and the different workflows available, please see our recent article IOAP explained.

Here, we explore the team behind the Institutional Open Access Program and the important work they do to provide flexible agreements and a range of benefits for institutions.

Who are the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) Team?

The IOAP team is made up of five Institutional Partnership Managers, who are responsible for supporting and managing institutions and consortia in specific locations.

In this article, we interview Becky Castellon and discuss her role and responsibilities within the team as well as her overall contribution to the running and maintenance of the IOAP.

Becky joined MDPI in September 2021, after completing her master’s in Digital Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. As of September 2023, she is the Institutional Partnerships Manager for Northern Europe, Benelux, France, Spain and Portugal and is the department’s team lead.

As the Institutional Partnerships Manager overseeing these regions, what key challenges are institutions facing regarding Open Access?

My region has very strong policy support for Open Access through OA mandates and support for Plan S. They are strong supporters of removing publicly funded research from behind paywalls, either via green OA (archiving in institutional repositories) or through publishing in Open Access journals.

However, whilst the funding agencies and national guidelines are strong, the article processing charge (APC) support for authors is not always there outside of transformative agreements. The discussions around how to sustainably achieve full Open Access and an open future are ongoing.

Additionally, over the last two years, there have been a lot of budget cuts hitting universities. This means that libraries must budget very carefully to make sure that they can provide the needed resources for their research community. Librarians are very important within the scholarly communications landscape; they keep everything running and are vastly underappreciated!

What is the most common question you get asked by institutions about the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP)?

Is there a catch?

No! This is a program that MDPI offers – for free – to institutions around the world to help support authors publishing in Open Access.

The IOAP was started in 2013 with the aim of providing additional access and transparency for institutions to what their researchers are submitting and publishing in our journals, and it’s one of the ways that we give back to the research community.

We are dedicated to making things simpler for our institutions, providing a point of contact, and providing discounts and support for our institutions and authors.

APCs can be a barrier for publishing in Gold OA, so we are committed to offering sustainable and cost-effective ways for institutions to support their research community.

Are there any major achievements that the Institutional Partnerships team is proud of this year?

So far this year, my region has accomplished many major achievements, including renewing 3 consortium agreements with Jisc, Bibsam and Sikt.

Collectively, the IOAP team have achieved a wide variety of important milestones. This includes renewing all major consortium agreements at the beginning of the year, as well as securing two new consortium agreements in North America and one with ZB MED, Germany. Throughout 2025, the team have partnered with over 110 new IOAP institutions across Germany, Thailand, the USA, Canada, Poland, China, Brazil, and the UK. Additionally, this includes securing the first IOAP partner institution in India.

Other major achievements include supporting six institutions who have chosen to operate under the flat fee agreement model offered by the IOAP.

The team have also contributed to a wide variety of outreach activities, including organising librarian webinars for our consortium partners about MDPI’s editorial process (for librarians in Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany). This is a great way for us to highlight our commitment to transparency and shed some light on our processes. IOAP partnerships manager Ryan Siu and I have assisted with several MDPI-organised events, including the NYC Salon, France Summit, Cambridge Forum, Montreal Salon and the UK Summit.

Finally, the team have collectively attended 18 scholarly communications conferences around the world – with more to come towards the end of the year. It’s important for us to be able to meet our librarians in person and put some faces to names.

MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) empowers open science

The Institutional Partnerships team are supporting institutions, universities and consortia in their Open Access journey by providing insight into the industry as well as solutions to complex administration issues, ultimately encouraging further development of the open science movement.

Open science supports the wide dissemination of knowledge and furthers the understanding of science and participation in research. MDPI is a proud leader in the OA industry and has vast knowledge and expertise in publishing through this model.

If you would like to learn more about the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), click here to see the IOAP website.