Publishing and Copyright

Academic publishing typically brings to mind peer-review and prestigious journals. Thanks to technological changes and experimentation with new formats, publishing is evolving.

The NC State University Libraries’ Open Knowledge Center (OKC) constantly monitors these developments and can provide the following information to individuals, departments, or administrators:

• Analysis of the academic publishing landscape
• Recommendations for contemporary publishing workflows
• Consultations on all forms of scholarly sharing, including practices like posting pre-prints online
• Information on navigating claims of infringement under the Copyright Claims Board

Libraries' support for publishing

The NC State University Libraries is happy to:

• offer expert consultations on all forms of open access publishing
• review author publication contracts for journals and books
• experiment with new and non-traditional forms of publication
• provide advice on licensing research products, including data, software, digital projects, and written materials
• recommend a repository or platform for sharing research works
• offer guidance on measuring the impact and articulating the value of your scholarly works

Our subject specialists are especially adept in:

• matching research to relevant journals or publishers
• determining a journal's impact and influence in a research subject
• helping make your publications more discoverable
• help you meet funder mandates for public access to your data and publications
• find appropriate data repositories for sharing the data associated with your publications

Connect with your subject specialist

Author's rights and Open Access

Protect your right to use your own work

The OKC provides expertise that can help you negotiate the legal and policy issues surrounding your publication decisions.

• We recommend the Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine as a tool to personalize a publication agreement addendum.
• The SPARC Author Addendum can be added to any contract to retain specific rights.
• You can also schedule a consultation to review your publication agreement and consider specific language to address your goals as an author.

Open access: help your work be read and cited more often

Many authors choose to make their work available online by making it "open access" (OA). Scholarly consensus has developed that publications that are made openly available online contribute to a readership and citation advantage.

• We do not offer financial support for open access article processing charges, although we do evaluate requests based on established criteria.
• We encourage, advocate for, and advise on many methods for making research artifacts openly accessible online without the need to pay anyone. Examples of this include pre-prints, our institutional repository, and including open publishing costs in funding proposals.
• We maintain expertise on a suite of open research tools that can inform other kinds of “open interventions” in your research workflow.

Open Access journals at NC State

Scholar-led and academy-owned platforms like Open Journal Systems and PubPub allow the research community to establish and control the production and dissemination of research and scholarship.

Several research units on campus publish their own open access journals:

• BioResources
• Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies
• Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management
• Hyperrhiz
• Education in the Health Professions

The Open Knowledge Center is available to advise on best practices for open access journal publishing and management, including author contracts, indexing, licensing options, platform choice, editorial/technical workflows, and more.