2025 Annual Report
Building a More Collaborative Future
At BioOne, we believe in a more collaborative, equitable, and sustainable scholarly ecosystem. This belief has guided us since BioOne’s founding, and over the past year we took meaningful actions towards this future.
Advancing BioOne’s Subscribe to Open (S2O) pilot was a major focus throughout 2025, resulting in a successful inaugural year for 2026. This means that the 2026 content from 71 titles from 54 societies, museums, and research organizations across 12 countries will be published open access without placing any financial burden on authors or readers. We are grateful to BioOne’s library community for their outstanding support and collaboration in this endeavor.
Today, the BioOne Digital Library reaches more than 5,500 libraries and institutions across 126 countries. Since 1999, this support has enabled the return of more than $83 million to BioOne’s community of publishing partners. Every one of those dollars helps to sustain independent nonprofit publishing in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.
As we reflect on 2025 and shift our focus to a successful 2026, we also look forward with excitement to BioOne’s next phase, as part of Johns Hopkins University Press. This recently announced union, which will officially begin on September 1, 2026, will expand our capacity to serve the scholarly community while remaining anchored to our enduring mission and values.
The work of building a more equitable scholarly ecosystem is not the work of any single organization. It is the work of a broad community of stakeholders who prioritize collaboration and collective gains. We are grateful to be part of that community with you.
With gratitude for your continued support,
ALAN H. SAVITZKY, PhD.
Chair of the Board of Directors
LAUREN KANE
President/CEO
Our Mission
BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research.
BioOne explores economic models and strategic partnerships that balance the needs of all stakeholders, and currently demonstrates this balance by offering financially sustainable information services in the biological sciences. BioOne supports best practices that increase operational effectiveness and technological standards that integrate its content with a global network of scholarly exchange.
The BioOne Community
BioOne has built a community of partners who share a commitment to making research more accessible and sustainable.
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Publishing societies, museums, research institutes, and independent presses
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Accessing universities, research libraries, and government agencies
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Consortia partners
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Articles accessed by students, researchers, and practitioners around the world in 2025
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Countries accessing the BioOne Digital Library
“We could not ask for a better partner than BioOne to help us uphold our values as a publisher and explore innovative ways to broaden our readership. With the inclusion of Invertebrate Biology in the Subscribe to Open (S2O) pilot program, we hope to provide open access to our journal starting with the 2026 volume.”
Michael H. Temkin, PhD
Interim Editor-in-Chief, Invertebrate Biology
Past President, American Microscopical Society
Delivering VALUE
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Returned to publishing partners since 2001
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Lower per title price than the commercial average
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Average cost per download
"Making knowledge available to everyone and supporting a diverse publishing landscape is very important to us. S2O allows society publishers and smaller publishers to remain independent and work towards open science, that is why the Delft University of Technology supports it."
Louise Otting-Geevers
Collection & License Manager
Delft University of Technology
Connecting Researchers to Critical Bioscience Content
Behind every number in BioOne’s story is a community of publishers, libraries, and researchers that have consistently chosen sustainability, equity, and collaboration. That is the ecosystem BioOne was built to support and to strengthen.
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Articles Published
in 2025
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Articles available
in BioOne Complete
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Of titles have
an Impact Factor
Titles in BioOne Complete
Interdisciplinary Research
- Agriculture & Agronomy
- Ecology
- Environmental Sciences
- Geology & Paleontology
- Ornithology
- Veterinary Sciences
- Biodiversity Conservation
- Entomology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Marine & Freshwater Biology
- Plant Sciences
- Zoology
"As a researcher running a medical entomology lab in Managua, I can tell you first hand how much BioOne means to us. Your platform is often the only way we can reach the high quality journals that drive our daily work on vectors and public health. For emerging and experienced scientists alike in the Global South, BioOne is not just a database—it is a lifeline."
Belk García
Head, Medical Entomology Laboratory
Instituto de Ciencias Sostenibles, ICS. Managua, Nicaragua
Supporting a More Open Future With S2O
BioOne was founded on a simple but powerful premise: libraries and publishers, working together, could accomplish what neither could alone. In 2025, that same spirit of collaboration drove BioOne’s Subscribe to Open (S2O) pilot.
Our S2O pilot brings together 71 titles from 54 societies, museums, and research organizations worldwide — the largest number of independent publishers under a single S2O offer to date. The model is straightforward: when enough libraries maintain their subscriptions to BioOne Complete, current-year content from participating titles flips to open access for everyone.
With the publisher cohort confirmed in late 2024, 2025 became the year of building support within the library community, an effort that has yielded meaningful results.
In June, the University of California signed a landmark five-year agreement extending through 2029 — covering the full S2O pilot term and beyond. The UC system’s commitment reflects a deep and longstanding investment in BioOne’s mission. As Miranda Bennett, Director of Shared Collections at the California Digital Library, put it, the agreement advances “mutual goals to shift the scholarly communication system toward greater openness and equity through sustainable and strategic partnerships.” In October, Max Planck Digital Library followed with a three-year agreement bringing BioOne Complete to all 84 Max Planck Society Institutes through 2028, citing a shared dedication to making research accessible and supporting independent scholarly publishers.
These and our extensive roster of partnerships represent more than subscription renewals. They are institutional commitments to a model that asks libraries to be active participants in open access. BioOne is grateful to every library and consortium that has stepped forward, and continues to invite the broader community to join them. The pilot’s success depends on collective action, and there is still time to be part of it.
Just as BioOne’s founding libraries and publishers came together in 1999 to build something new together, our community is doing it again. Together, we’re creating an equitable path to open access that works for researchers, publishers, and the libraries that have always made it possible.
"We have faculty engaged in some pretty niche research areas. And we understand the struggles they have in getting that content out to the rest of the world, and in having it recognized as important work that needs be supported. So we really want to support society publishing and university publishing first, because we know that that’s where many of our faculty are coming from."
Jill Emery
Professor, Collection Development & Management Librarian,
Portland State University
The People Behind the Science
Behind every journal is a community of researchers, editors, and staff working to keep independent science alive. In 2025, BioOne launched its Publisher Profiles series to bring those stories forward. These Q&A spotlights explore the missions, challenges, and perspectives of the societies and people who make up our publishing community.
In 2025 we were honored to feature:
BioOne Ambassador Award
Since 2018, we’ve awarded $40,000 to early career researchers who excel at communicating their work to broader audiences. The BioOne Ambassador Awards recognize scientists who can explain complex research in ways that encourage greater scientific literacy and aid in the broader understanding of our natural world. In 2025, 19 publishing partners nominated 39 early career researchers.
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Awarded to early career researchers
since 2018
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Downloads of Ambassador Award research
2025 BioOne Ambassador Award Winners:
"I can't stress enough how grateful I am for this support. I feel very honoured, and this keeps me motivated in pursuing my goals of doing research with bats."
Aquetzalli Nayelli Rivera Villanueva
2025 BioOne Ambassador
Featured Content Collections
In 2025, BioOne Vista, Top & Trending Research, and our special content collections continued to feature research from our community on topics from invertebrate zoology to environmental and public health, environmental policy and sustainable agriculture. These collections help researchers discover articles, and gives BioOne’s publishers a broader audience for the science they work hard to produce.
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Full-text article downloads from content collections
Financial Report
2025 was again a stable financial year for BioOne despite emerging disruption to research and educational funding. In 2025, BioOne achieved a total net sales income of $7,719,401, a slight 0.1% increase over 2024. Renewal performance remained a strong 96%; combined with controlled operating expenses this allowed for the continued distribution of 64% of BioOne Complete net revenue back to participating publishers.
2025 Total Revenue
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2025 Total Publisher Consideration
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BioOne Revenue & Reinvestment
BioOne’s 2025 Audited Financial Statements and Form 990 are available on the BioOne website.
Leadership
2025 Board of Directors
Alan Savitzky, Chair
Catherine Murray-Rust, Treasurer
Joni Blake*, Secretary
Xochitl Clare
Raym Crow*
Taran Grant
Robbie Hart
Chris Makowski
Kathryn McCarthy
Eric S. Nagy*
Kamran Naim
Mira Waller
Ans ter Woerds
2025 Staff
Lauren Kane
Beth Hutchins
Christine Orr
Chelsea Tharp
Maggie Grasseschi
Cheryl Greer
Meredith Pond
Amanda Rogers
BioOne is an innovative nonprofit collaborative and the leading content aggregator in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. More than 150 global scientific societies and nonprofit publishing organizations include their journals in BioOne’s flagship product, BioOne Complete, for the benefit of 5,500 accessing institutions and millions of researchers worldwide. Since 2001, BioOne has returned more than $83 million in royalty sharing back to its participants, with a commitment to share research more broadly, equitably, and sustainably.