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Waidner-Spahr Library

Copyright & Scholarly Communication: Open Access Publishing Opportunities

Open Access for Scholarly Communication

Open access refers to the ability to freely access a scholarly article from anywhere in the world, without the need for a journal subscription.

Removing the subscription barrier has been shown to increase the visibility of scholarship, with a corresponding increase in citation rates in many fields. Open access takes a variety of forms, including institutional or discipline-specific repositories for pre-prints; mandates requiring specific government-funded research articles to be placed in PubMed Central; and born-digital open access journals. All of these forms can enhance the distribution of knowledge and broaden the impact of scholarship.

Open access publishers such as the Public Library of Science (PLOS) show that open access is fully compatible with peer-review, high quality editing and publishing, and journal impact factors. Open access journals are no longer new, and in some cases are replacing traditional journals as the desired place to publish. An increasing number of research funders are requiring open access publication. 

Open Access Explained!

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship (September 2018) was produced by Jason Schmitt at Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Open Access at Dickinson College

Open Access (OA) Fee Waivers (Transformative or "Read & Publish" Agreements)

The library subscriptions to these journal publisher packages include provision for waiving open access publication fees (article processing charges) for most types of articles.  A Dickinson faculty/staff member must be the corresponding/submitting author (please use your Dickinson email address when submitting your article), and the article must be accepted through the journal's established peer-review and editorial process. You should be prompted during the online submission process to confirm that you wish to publish OA and claim your fee waiver, or in some cases this will be offered to you in your notification of acceptance.  We will add to this list if more such agreements become available.

Questions?  Contact Theresa Arndt, Assoc. Dean for Collections and Discovery (arndtt@dickinson.edu).

  • American Chemical Society journals (for manuscripts accepted 1/1/2023 through 12/31/2025)
  • American Society for Microbiology - starting in 2025 for 6 (six) primary research journals only. No OA fees for Dickinson authors, 25% discount on page charges (if author also a personal ASM member, page charge discount is 50%), other publication fees may still apply.  More details on publisher website.
  • Annual Reviews - those journals currently on the "Subscribe to Open" eligibility list have no OA fees for any authors, funded by multiple libraries' collective ongoing subscription payments
  • Cambridge University Press journals (for manuscripts accepted 1/1/2023 through 12/31/2025).  Use the CUP waivers and discount tools for details and eligible journals list. (Through Lyrasis library consortia.)
  • Company of Biologists - 5 journal package (starting in Spring 2023) See details at: https://www.biologists.com/library-hub/read-publish/
  • Demography, Duke University Press - The library is a Subscribe to Open (S2O) Community Partner. Corresponding authors who are affiliated with S2O subscribing institutions are guaranteed to be open access in perpetuity.
  • Institute of Physics (IOP) journals, eligible Journals List A, B and D (for manuscripts accepted 1/1/2023 through 12/31/2025).  Dickinson is part of the Lyrasis consortia deal; details and eligible titles are at https://publishingsupport.iopscience.iop.org/questions/researchers-from-the-united-states/
  • Springer and Nature "academic" journals (2024-2027) See details for authors including list of eligible journals at: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/oa-agreements/lyrasis

Questions about open access at Dickinson?  
Email scholar@dickinson.edu

Questions about open access at Dickinson?  
Email scholar@dickinson.edu

Caveat Emptor - Predatory Publishers

See the Avoiding Predatory Publishers tab on this guide.