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Publishing, Scholarly Communications, and Open Access

Why consider Open Access Publishing?

Have you considering open-access publishing? Research made available via this free and publicly-accessible medium is becoming increasingly cited and many open-access journals are now peer reviewed.

Two models of Open Access: OA Self Archiving (repositories) VS OA Publishing (OA Journals)

OA Self-Archiving

  • Self-Archiving: The Other Route to Open Access

    OA journals are not the only way to achieve free access to scholarly literature. Authors can retain the right to post their articles by submitting addendum's such as the CIC author addendum. Even if you are publishing in a commercial journal and didn't retain your rights (copyright), you may still be able make your work freely available online by depositing it in a digital repository. In fact, a strong majority of publishers allow this practice (you can check the policies of specific publishers using the SHERPA RoMEO database).

    • SHERPA/RoMEO : Use this site to find a summary of archiving policies / permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.

    Repositories

  • Institutional Repositories, e.g. INDIGO (UIC's Institutional Repository)
  • Subject or discipline repositories, e.g. 
    • arXiv.org (Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics);
    • PubMed Central (PMC) (National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.)
    • Registry of Research Data Repositories - to explore options for depositing your research data.

OA Publishing in OA Journals

Open Access Journals

* Directory of Open Access Journals
* Open J-Gate

Take Action: What You Can Do

Publish in Open Access Journals & Books 

"Open-access literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder." —Peter Suber

Start Your Own Open Access Journal: Journals@UIC

UIC Library supports open access journal publishing by providing an online journal publishing server called Journals@UIC.

Contribute Your Work to UIC's Institutional Repository

INDIGO, UIC's scholarly digital repository is an online collection of the research and scholarship of faculty, students, and staff at UIC.

Preserve Rights to Your Own Work

Do not automatically sign the publisher's "Copyright Transfer Agreement." Use the Addendum To Publication Agreements For CIC Authors (.doc) when you submit a publication to a publisher.

Comply With Open Access Legislation and Policies