The International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) has announced that the Journal of Food Protection will be published as a fully open-access journal with Elsevier beginning in January 2023. IAFP sees this as another step forward in its mission to provide food safety professionals worldwide with a forum to exchange information on protecting the food supply. 

According to the announcement, IAFP’s decision was motivated in part by its Editorial Board’s desire to make the journal’s essential research open to all and to reach the widest audience across all its sectors in corporate, government, and academia. When prior issues of the Journal of Food Protection older than five years were made free to read online, usage data skyrocketed, confirming a need for the content. These back files include JFP’s two prior titles: Journal of Milk and Food Technology (1947-1976) and Journal of Milk Technology (1937-1946). 

Noticeable growth in authors choosing open access indicated a desire to have their content freely available for all to read. In the current model, all authors already pay page charges. This fee will be replaced by an Article Publishing Charge of $1,600 for IAFP Members, for which the articles will become fully accessible upon publication. Under this model, authors can also share their research more broadly, without paywalls or copyright issues. 

Following a full exploration and consideration of its options, the IAFP Executive Board chose to work with Elsevier based on their experience transitioning subscription journals to fully open access journals and the strength of their platform that will help increase the discovery and visibility of JFP content. The agreement will reduce the cost of open-access publishing for both IAFP members and nonmembers. 

IAFP looks forward to making all JFP research available for everyone to read, download, copy, and distribute.