Inter-Research (IR) has been supporting open access (OA) since the first OA articles appeared in our publications in late 2005. We were among the earliest publishers to fully digitise our entire journal output and to make the bulk of this (all articles older than 5 years) freely accessible to all readers via our website. Four of our 8 journals are fully OA (3 of those were originally founded as subscription-based journals) and the remaining 4 journals are "hybrids", i.e. the publications are a combination of subscriber-only access and OA.

With only 8 titles, IR is a very small publisher in comparison to the large global players with hundreds of journals. Our hallmark is a rigorous and robust peer review process coupled with high-quality production. This quality incurs higher costs, which have only been economically sustainable for IR through the hybrid publication model. We agree, however, that it is time for OA to progress beyond hybrid journals. We look forward to our role in developing and implementing new publishing models under Plan S (https://www.coalition-s.org/). In 2021, IR will be entering a transformative period towards full OA publishing by 2025.

IR's challenge, particularly as a very small commercial publisher, will be to develop review and production processes that maintain the high standards we are known for in the scientific community but at prices that are affordable to OA funders. We look forward to stepping out on this journey with you at our side.