How We Approach Institutional Open Access Initiatives

Background

Every year the NC State University Libraries receives inquiries from researchers regarding institutional membership in open access publishing initiatives. Learn more about the open access (OA) publishing agreements that are currently in place.

Typically inquiries arise when researchers submit manuscripts for publication in open access journals and are asked to pay an article processing charge (APC). Instead of charging for access to their publications, some open access publishers rely on the APC, which can range from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, to recover their operating costs. Because many researchers do not receive large grants that could help pay for the cost of disseminating their research, they look for assistance to pay the APC. Some open access publishers have institutional membership or subscription models that can allow institutions to help by discounting or fully covering APC charges for their authors.

Common types of open access publishing initiatives that we consider:

• Adding an open access component to a traditional “read-only” journal package subscription (often referred to as “Read and Publish” agreements).
• Institutional membership with standalone open access publishing initiatives that are not associated with traditional journal subscriptions. 

What do we look for in an open access agreement?

Each case is unique, but these are some of the factors we consider when deciding whether to participate in an open access publishing initiative.

Factors we consider for all types of OA agreements:

• Will this initiative be financially sustainable for the foreseeable future?
• Are the subjects covered by the journals relevant to our researchers?
• Do the journals meet the standards of impact, timeliness, and indexing expected by our researchers?

Factors we consider for Read & Publish agreements:

• Is this agreement cost-neutral or just a minimal increase compared to our existing read-only subscription?
• How much ongoing administrative labor will be required from us to manage the agreement (e.g. approving APC requests)?
• Is there an annual cap on the number of articles that can be published OA? (We strongly prefer uncapped agreements.)

Factors we consider for standalone OA initiatives:

• Do we have the capacity in our collections budget to add and sustain our membership?
• Will we break even on the dollar amount that we spend on the membership relative to the amount that our researchers save on the article charges?
• Does membership in this initiative send a clear message of support for making research more accessible and allow us to influence the academic publishing industry in innovative and sustainable directions?

Learn more about open access publishing options on our scholarly sharing guide and our open research guide.