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Open Access Scholarly Publishing 101

Introduction to open access publishing of research articles for UVA authors

Deposit a version of your work in an open repository ("Green OA")

  • Libra - UVA’s institutional repository of open scholarship created by the University community. This online archive provides a central, stable location for scholarly output of all kinds.
    • LibraOpen: Open articles, books, and other creative works
    • LibraETD: Theses and dissertations
    • LibraData: Datasets, software, and other research material
  • Other repositories – scholarly societies, government agencies, and others host open repositories dedicated to specific disciplines or subject matter. If you have questions, your subject liaison may be able to help you identify open repositories in your field.
  • Publisher policies – if you publish (or plan to publish) your work in a journal, the journal publisher may have policies limiting sharing your work. Learn more at the Library’s Publisher Policies page.

Publish in OA Journals that do not charge fees ("Diamond OA")

  • Diamond open access journals do not charge a fee to authors. Journals funded by SCOAP3 are Diamond OA options in the field of particle physics, for example.
  • Aperio - UVA's peer-reviewed open access press is free to authors and readers and accepts proposals from UVA faculty, staff, and students interested in starting a journal, moving a journal from a different publisher, or publishing an open access book.

Publish in Journals with OA fees covered by Library Subscriptions

Publish in Journals with OA fees charged to the author ("Gold OA")

  • Some "Gold" and "hybrid" journals charge a fee to authors for open access publishing.
  • Check the UVA and VIVA pages to be sure we don't have a deal with the publisher.
  • Authors who publish in journals that require APCs or other fees sometimes include the cost of publishing in grant proposals or seek funding support from their department.
  • The Library does not pay or subsidize individual Article Processing Charges or other OA fees outside of our negotiated Read-and-Publish Agreements, for several reasons:
    1. Depositing an appropriate version in Libra is always available to all UVA authors as a no-cost way of making their work available open access. Self-archiving in open repositories has many benefits relative to fee-based gold open access.
    2. A Library pilot program of paying individual APCs from 2013-2017 found that the costs and staff time involved were unsustainable, and that only a few departments were using the fund, so it wasn’t serving our community equitably.
    3. The APC fees charged by most publishers are too high, are growing too fast, and seem impervious to competition.
    4. Paying for open access to articles in a subscription journal (aka "hybrid" OA) is arguably unfair and unhealthy for the ecosystem.
    5. There is no mechanism for controlling the cost of APC fees or preventing double-dipping when the Library doesn't negotiate collectively and directly with the publisher.
    6. APCs appear to be an inequitable form of support for open access publishing that creates barriers for authors who lack access to funding, notably authors in the global South.
    7. Paying or subsidizing high APC fees tends to further entrench established commercial publishers, disadvantaging competitors with more affordable, sustainable approaches.