Scholarly Publishing & Open Access: Open Access

Although the university does not have an open access publishing fund, the University Libraries do have agreements in place with some publishers to allow our faculty and researchers to publish in their OA journals. These include:

• Cambridge University Publishing - The agreement applies to any article containing original research where a university member serves as the corresponding author. It covers both fully and hybrid OA Cambridge journals. All researchers need to do is ensure they use their university email when submitting. Learn more at the Agreement Guide or use the Cambridge Checker Tool to see which journals are covered by this agreement.
• Royal Society of Chemistry - This agreement allows for 10 articles a year to be published OA at no cost to UNR researchers. This works on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have an article accepted in either a fully or hybrid OA RSC journal, you will be prompted if you would like to publish behind a paywall or to make your article OA. If any of the allotments are still available, RSC will let you know at this point. If they are not, you will receive a 15% discount. 
• ACM Open - Beginning 1st February 2024 UNR authors will gain the ability to publish unlimited APC-eligible research with no associated APCs or other fees. The process will be seamless from the authors’ perspective; as long as they use their UNR-affiliated email addresses when submitting their papers to ACM, their work will immediately be routed through the ACM Open workflow and will be made fully open access upon publication.  

If you have any questions about these agreements, please email Teresa Schultz at teresas@unr.edu.

The open access movement seeks to make scientific knowledge available to anyone online, not just those whose institution can afford a subscription to expensive scholarly journals. OA has a range of levels, from something that's free to read to an item that has been licensed for any reuse.

See A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access by Peter Suber's and the FAQ on open access by the Authors Alliance to learn more.

Want to learn even more? Read the book Understanding Open Access by the Authors Alliance. The electronic version is open access and free to download. For a more in-depth look of how to practice open science in general, check out The Open Science Training Handbook.

Although open access seeks to help everyone, studies show that publishing OA helps researchers as well.

• SPARC Europe tracks a number of studies that have researched whether open access plays a role in increasing citations for articles, with most studies finding a correlation.
• How Open Science Helps Researchers Succeed - a literature review of the many benefits of OA.

1. OA journals aren't peer-reviewed.

Open access has no bearing on whether a journal is peer-reviewed or not. The Directory of Open Access Journals has a list of thousands of OA journals that are peer-reviewed.

2. I have to pay a fee to publish in an OA journal.

Some OA journals do charge a fee, often called an article processing charge, but they're actually in the minority. According to the DOAJ database, only about 25 percent to 30 percent of OA journals charge a fee. If you do want to publish in a journal that charges a fee, check with your grant funder as many of them - including the federal government - will cover that charge.

3. I can't publish OA because I need to get tenure.

Although a number of OA journals are now considered some of the best journals in their disciplines, you don't have to publish in one to take part in OA. Many paywalled publishers allow authors to post copies of their works online in personal websites, subject repositories and institutional repositories like the University of Nevada, Reno's ScholarWolf repository. Learn more about archiving your work.

5. Everyone who needs access to my article has it already.

Because of rising journal prices, not every university library is able to subscribe to all scholarly journals, including the Knowledge Center. Libraries can request articles through Interlibrary Loan, but even this has limitations. Researchers in other countries and those who don't belong to an institution, policymakers, professional practitioners and even regular citizens who are interested in a research topic don't have access to these journals.