Open Access Publishing

One dependable way to provide open access to your work is to self-archive in the UNCW Institutional Repository. Most publishers allow you to place a version of your published work in an open access repository, provided that you follow a few stipulations. For journal articles, this often means depositing the “accepted version” of the manuscript (i.e. the word document that has gone through peer review but has not yet received aesthetic copyediting and typesetting by the journal) and providing a DOI link to the published version of the article. If you’ve published through another open access pathway, you’re still welcome (and encouraged) to deposit a copy in the UNCW Institutional Repository.

• If you’re wondering about the sharing and distribution terms of a particular academic journal, search for the journal in the Open Policy Finder.
• For more about how to deposit an item in the UNCW Institutional Repository, check out this LibGuide.

Another way to self-archive is to submit your work to a disciplinary/subject repository. Some repositories accept pre-print versions of manuscripts and others accept post-print versions, like those described above in reference to the UNCW IR. If depositing to a disciplinary repository, make sure to understand their copyright terms and open sharing policies.

• Click here for a consolidated list of disciplinary repositories.
• For a more searchable collection of open repositories, explore OpenDOAR.

Every year, new journals are established without fees for authors or readers, and many editorial boards are seeking ways to transition their journals to a fee-free model, often referred to as Diamond open access. What these journals may sometimes lack in recognition and long-term citation attention, they try to compensate for via the well-documented citation advantage associated with open access publishing and through flexibility to innovate the publishing process.

If you’re wondering about Diamond open access options in your field, explore the Directory of Open Access Journals. For those concerned about predatory journals, indexing in DOAJ is a good indicator that a journal is not predatory.

Read-and-Publish deals are subscription contracts between UNCW Library and publishers that allow UNCW authors to avoid article processing charges (APCs) when publishing open access in some portion of those publishers' journals.

For more information on how to publish open access through UNCW Library's current Read-and-Publish Deals, explore this subpage, also linked in LibGuide Navigation to the left:

UNCW Library Read-and-Publish Deals

For those seeking grant or fellowship funding, it may be worth including a line-item in your future proposed budgets to account for open access article processing charges. This allows for more freedom in selecting any venue for your work. Federal funders now require grant recipients to make their research outputs publicly available. Including APC costs in a grant budget is a common route by which to meet these requirements, although self-archiving is also approved by most agencies. For questions on federal funder requirements, contact our Open Knowledge & Research Impact Librarian using the links to the left.

Simon Fraser University offers some stock language to include in a grant proposal for this purpose:

I expect to publish [number] peer-reviewed journal articles based on the research directed under this grant. Sample journals in my field that are possible places for publication include : [journals]. Article processing charges for these journals currently range in cost from [$xx.xx-$xx.xx]. Therefore, I am requesting [$xx.xx] in funding to cover the expected APC costs for peer-reviewed journal articles from this grant.

UNCW’s Research Development Office and Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance can support more in-depth discussions about grants.

In the past, UNCW Library has offered limited funding to defray APC costs for UNCW-affiliated authors seeking to publish open access. The library’s Open Access Publishing Fund is currently inactive as we consider how best to invest in sustainable open access models.