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Publishing and Open Access trends -- Fall 2023: Home

More details about current deals that include Open Access licenses

Springer
New -- Very probably for 2024, Springer journals -- no-cost OA licenses in their Springer Hybrid journals (but not in their Gold journals).  This does not include the Nature or NPJ journals.
But this probably will not quite start on January 1, 2024, due to slow negotiations.
 
Wiley journals -- no-cost Open Access licenses
We have a Read and Publish deal with Wiley journals.  Which means we have permanent rights to read all their journals and we get zero-cost Open Access licenses for articles that our authors publish.  
But, there is an important complication for late 2023.  Here is a start on explaining it.  Our North Carolina/South Carolina consortium, that does not include UNC and Duke, has 735 zero-cost Open Access licenses for 2023.  We're on trend to use them all by about mid-November.  (Then we'll restart with >735 in 2024.)  This concerns me for journals where you have to publish Open Access.  When we run out, you'll have to pay.  If your journal is "Hybrid," you can still publish it without the OA license, or you could still possibly find other funds for the OA license.
Here are Wiley's journals, but these pages are difficult to use.  Ask your librarian, or me, for help.  Hindawi journals are included in this.
We continue this deal with Wiley through 2024.  You do have to be the corresponding author, and it has to be a research article or review of research (not book/software review).

 
Cambridge journals -- no-cost OA licenses for all journals, no cap
 
American Chemical Society
 
The Microbiology Society (not the American Society of Microbiology)
 
Possibly in 2025 and beyond, as we renegotiate our Elsevier, Oxford, Sage, and other agreements, we'll cover their journals also. 
Other possibilities:  Frontier's Gold OA journals.  What else would you like to see? 
The library has to mostly focus on the publishers with whom we (read and) publish the most, or are likely in the future to publish the most.
 

Problems for authors and libraries

There are fewer no-cost journal article "slots," while globally, more researchers want to publish more.

How to pay for Open Access?  (There are OA journals that do not charge authors, although they might be less visible.)

How to not get burned by inadequate peer review?

Details and causes:

  • Change and barriers in journal publishing. 
    • Funders requiring open access sooner.  Some publishers giving up on subscription models.  Illegal and non-compliant access.
  • More journals are requiring payments by authors.  They have fewer choices that do not require authors to pay.
  • New, growing journals with some inadequate or fraudulent peer review.  (Old journals that cannot find enough reviewers.)
  • Growing preference and acceptance of author-pays Open Access.  Why? More citations and greater influence on practitioners and public.
  • What about Green OA or author self-archiving?

What libraries are doing:

  • Negotiating Read and Publish (aka Transformational) agreements, that ideally will take us to an affordable(?) open access future, in a few years.
  • Supporting Green open access, with repositories and advice.
  • Advising authors about remaining zero-cost journals, which may include those in Read & Publish deals.
  • Subscribe to Open, with many smaller publishers.  e.g., Annual Reviews

Two questions

We have transformative agreements with Wiley and Cambridge and are considering one with Springer-Nature.  If these publishers transform to only Gold OA (author pays) journals, what happens to the approximately half million that we pay for subscriptions now?

What is an OA license worth?

What's going on in publishing? Where not to publish?

Where to publish? Where not to publish?

Check the journal in Web of Science, SCImago (uses Scopus), PubMed/MEDLINE, Cabell's.  Is it at least findable in Google Scholar?  If I detect a hint of anything substandard, I'll Google [journal name] predatory (and not believe everything).

Talk about these publishers for Public Health & Exercise Science

Journal of Environmental and Public Health (Hindawi, now Wiley's)

No longer accepting submissions.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (MDPI)

Frontiers in Sports and Active Living (Frontiers)

My opinion -- We need these publishers, and we need them to do a good job in peer review.  And we need the traditional publishers.  And we need them all to have profit margins more moderate than the pharmaceutical industry's.

My advice for authors -- Think about risk on a continuum.  Avoid what looks like inadequate peer review.  For the next few years, have a balanced record that's not only Frontiers/MDPI/HIndawi.  What if you know the editor and it's a special issue on an important topic?

 

Also see

See library guides on Scholarly Communications and on PREPARE workshop 2018.

Remember our repository, NC DOCKS.

Any interest in preprint archives, such as BioRxiv, SportRxiv?

Health Sciences Librarian

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John Wiswell

Levine Hall 542F & Belk Library 225, (828)262-7853

Open Access publishing directly supported by University Libraries at Appalachian State

During 2022-2023, so far,

covered about 35 Open Access licenses in Wiley/Hindawi journals for AppState authors

covered about 7 Open Access licenses in Cambridge journals

and many Accepted Manuscripts made available (Green OA) in NC DOCKS!

We'll probably support about another 40 OA licenses in 2024, with Wiley, Springer, Cambridge, ACS, and possibly other publishers.