What is OA?
Open access (OA) allows for free and immediate online access to scholarly works that anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or share. OA differs from traditional pay-to-read subscription models that are traditionally paid for by libraries.
OA publishing comes with several advantages: it removes access barriers for the research community and beyond, and it also gives the authors more exposure and a wider reach. Authors retain their intellectual property rights, and they may choose to publish under a Creative Commons license that specifies how readers may use their articles.
Open access can be a complex issue, and the terminology can be confusing. SPARC, PLOS, and OASPA have created a guide for evaluating the openness of journals called HowOpenIsIt? The guide shows the spectrum of openness on a range of components:
- readership
- reuse
- copyright
- posting
- machine readability
Elon University Agreements
We are delighted to announce that through Belk Library, Elon University has entered agreements that enables researchers at Elon to publish their articles open access (OA) with the following publishers:
- Cambridge University Press (no cost to publish OA)
- Wiley Journals (no cost to publish OA) **Note - this deal has expired for 2024; it will begin again January 1, 2025.
- ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) (no cost to publish OA)
- ACS (American Chemical Society) (no cost to publish OA)
- SAGE Journals (10% off publishing fees for ~1000 SAGE journals)
- Carolina Consortium Springer Nature Open Access Deal (no cost to publish OA)
Read how one Elon faculty member benefitted from the library's OA agreement.