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Open Access

A brief guide about open access

OA Books

Tools for Finding OA Materials

Publisher Copyright Policies

Authors who are faced with a publication contract that seeks transfer of the copyright should not hesitate to negotiate new terms or at least to reserve rights to use their own work in future teaching and writing and publish their work in a repository or find a different publisher. There are resources that can help in making decisions about their copyrights. 

Resources: 

  • The Authors Alliance: Promotes authorship for the "public good by supporting authors who write to be read." 
  • Author Rights & the SPARC Author Addendum: SPARC promotes authors' rights and open access. SPARC's author addendum allow authors retain open access rights in their author agreement. 
  • Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine: Creative Commons offers this addendum engine to assist authors in creating addenda to be included with publication agreements. These documents amend the publication agreement to allow authors to retain rights to use and share their work. 
  • SHERPA/RoMEO: This project offers important insight into the language of publication agreements. 

Publisher Agreements

JMU Libraries has some agreements in place to reduce costs associated with Article Processing Charges (APCs) for JMU faculty publishing in open access journals. JMU Libraries has no central fund to provide APC support.

  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    The VIVA consortium provides JMU authors a discount on APCs for AAAS publications. To receive these savings, authors should submit their institution's AAAS number upon acceptance of their manuscript. JMU’s AAAS number is 1935984. The current level of savings on APCs is $150. 
  • MDPI
    JMU Libraries is a member of the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) of the Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI) group. The IOAP membership also allows JMU authors to publish on the MDPI platform at a 10% discount in article publishing charges. Content is available on the MDPI website
    For information about how to submit articles for publication, consult the IOAP program guide

Read and Publish Deals (No APCs)

  • Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

VIVA and ACM have partnered to develop a new, consortial read and publish agreement. Corresponding authors at the participating institutions will be able to publish articles in ACM journals, magazines, and proceedings as Open Access with no fees to the author (the agreement does not include books or book chapters) from October 1, 2021 to December 31, 2024. Authors who do not wish to publish OA may opt out and publish their work as subscription-only. Users will continue to have full read/subscription access to the content in the ACM Digital Library. We suggest the Permission Release option which provides ACM with a non-exclusive license to publish their article, and allows the authors to make their published article shareable via the use of Creative Commons license.

Author instructions can be found at the VIVA website.

  • American Chemical Society (ACS)

VIVA and ACS have partnered to develop a consortial read and publish agreement, beginning January 1, 2024. Corresponding authors at participating institutions will be able to publish open access articles in ACS journals at no cost.

Author resources for publishing OA are available at the ACS website.

  • Cambridge University Press

VIVA has a contract with Cambridge that allows any JMU corresponding author who publishes in Cambridge’s open access journals (either full or hybrid) to do so without paying APCs (since they are built into the cost to us). Author instructions and the list of journals that are included in this deal are available on the Cambridge website.

Read through these "Cambridge OA Author Instructions" to learn how to make your article open access via the Libraries' agreement.

  • Company of Biologists

JMU Libraries has entered into a new two-year agreement (2024-2026) with The Company of Biologists. As part of this five-journal agreement, corresponding authors at JMU can publish open access research articles in both The Company of Biologists' hybrid subscription journals (Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology) and their fully open access journals (Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open). A step-by-step guide for authors is available here.

  • International Water Association (IWA)

VIVA has started a three-year read and publish agreement with the International Water Association (IWA) that will allow corresponding authors at all VIVA institutions to publish open access articles in IWA journals and expand reading access for this content as well. Corresponding authors at VIVA institutions will be able to publish journal articles open access at no cost from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025 in these journals.

Author instructions are specific to the journal and can be found here.

  • Institute of Physics (IOP)

VIVA and IOP have partnered to develop an agreement that will allow corresponding authors at all participating institutions to publish open access articles within almost all of IOP’s journals at no additional cost from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2024. This includes 58 hybrid journals as well as 18 fully (Gold) open access journals, with CC BY 4.0 as the standard license. NB: The American Astronomical Society (AAS) journals are open access but their OA publishing fees cannot be included in IOP transformative agreements at this time.

All qualifying articles will be identified by IOP Publishing and published by default on an open access basis. All fees related to open access on eligible articles are covered; other charges such as page or color charges are not included and will continue to be charged to authors.

More information about IOP transformative agreements is available at the IOP website. The author workflow is available on this guide.

  • PLOS

Starting January 1, 2024 VIVA is beginning a new two-year partnership with PLOS. As part of the Flat Fee Agreement, corresponding authors at participating institutions can publish open access at no cost in seven PLOS journals: PLOS Complex Systems, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS ONE, and PLOS Pathogens.

  • Rockefeller University Press

VIVA and Rockefeller University Press have partnered to develop a new, consortial read and publish agreement. Research articles by corresponding authors at VIVA member institutions are published immediate open access under a CC-BY license, directly deposited to PubMed Central (PMC) and subsequently to Europe PMC, and archived in LOCKSS/CLOCKSS and Portico, from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023. VIVA institutions also receive unlimited access to all content published in RUP's three hybrid journals — Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), and Journal of General Physiology (JGP)—immediately after publication.

Author instructions can be found at the VIVA website.

  • Springer Nature

VIVA has entered into a consortial read and publish agreement with Springer Nature, beginning January 1, 2024. Corresponding authors at participating institutions can publish open access in Springer Hybrid journals at no cost. More information can be found on the VIVA page.

  • Wiley

VIVA and Wiley have partnered to develop an agreement that includes journal subscriptions as well as Open Access publishing funds for both hybrid and fully gold journals. Authors at the participating institutions will be able to publish articles in either Wiley fully gold open access journals or as individual articles in Wiley's extensive list of subscription journals, from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2024.

Note that for fully Gold journals, funds are allocated at the time of manuscript submission. Manuscripts must be submitted for publication consideration January 1, 2021 or after to qualify for the funding. For hybrid Open Access articles, funds are allocated at the time of publication. Manuscripts must be accepted for publication after January 1, 2022 to qualify.

Author instructions and an FAQ can be found at this VIVA website.
https://guides.lib.jmu.edu/openaccess/findingOA
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