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Faculty Scholarly Publishing

Faculty are invited to use this guide for information regarding scholarly publishing, open access, bibliometrics, and APC information. E. H. Butler Library Subscribes to many resources that can assist faculty with scholarship endeavors.

Open Access Publishing: Dos & Don'ts, Whys and Why Nots

***NEWS: Cambridge University Press & SUNY Buffalo State University Sign Transformative Agreement to Waive all Article Processing Fees (APCs) for Buffalo State Faculty*** 

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E. H. Butler Library is pleased to announce it has reached a three-year deal with Cambridge University Press to waive all article-processing charges (APCs) from Cambridge University Press journals for Buffalo State University faculty authors. Open access publications for Cambridge University Press have waived all APCs since January. In addition to waiving APC costs for the duration of the new contract, Cambridge has granted Butler Library patrons access to an additional 397 Cambridge journals. This is a three-year transformative deal.  For more information, please contact Joe Riggie, Head of Information Management, or Chris Hulsman, Electronic and Educational Resources Librarian.

Open Access Mandate 2026 - Federally Funded Research 

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In August of 2022, President Biden announced that all federally funded research must immediately be made openly available to the public. This legislation takes effect in 2026. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), has already implemented a policy that makes NIH funded research available to the public. This does not necessarily mean that the published research is "Open-Access" by the definition of the term. There are many questions still revolving around the impact of this legislation: 

  • What will this mean for journal subscriptions and packages? 
  • How will open-access publishing and Article Processing Fees (APCs) be impacted? 
  • What license will I have to publish under? 

We will continue to monitor the impact of this legislation and share news regarding the outcomes. In the meantime, the following is a list of readings that will shed some light on this legislation and the effects on scholarly output: 

What is Open-Access? 

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Open access journals are journals whose articles are available and reusable worldwide free of charge and without restrictions immediately on publication. As a rule, contributions in journals that meet this definition are published under a Creative Commons license granted by the authors.

-Definition from the Open-Access Network

Choosing an Open-Access Journal to Publish In

Selecting an open-access journal to send manuscripts to can be a difficult task. There are several criteria you should use to judge an open-access journal. There are also a number of resources available to you as Buffalo State University Faculty. 

Be sure to evaluate the journal to be sure the publisher/journal is not predatory. For more information on predatory 

Questions Used to Evaluating an Open-Access Journal

  • Are there fees (APCs) associated with publishing in the journal and are those fees clearly listed? 
  • Does the journal provide details about the peer-review process and does it list the journal's editors?
  • Do you recognize the names of the editors? And does the institutional affiliation match on the institution's pages? 
  • Is the journal open-access OR hybrid
  • Is the journal located in the Primo ALL-Search Index for Butler Library? 
  • Is the publisher a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association (OASPA)?
  • Is the journal listed on Ulrichsweb or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?
What are Hybrid Access Journals? 

hybrid open-access journal is a subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access. This status typically requires the payment of a publication fee (also called an article processing charge or APC) to the publisher in order to publish an article open access, in addition to the continued payment of subscriptions to access all other content. (Wikipedia)

Do's & Don'ts of Open Access Publishing

What to Do: 
  • Look up the Open Access Journal title in The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
    • DOAJ (link below) is a directory of journals that publish open access. Being listed in DOAJ is a good indicator that the journal is not predatory and publishes through a legitimate peer-review process. DOAJ will also list the Article Processing Charge (APC) for most journals. 
  • Visit Think, Check, Submit to rate the journal you want to publish in through a checklist of criteria that will protect you as the researcher and author of the article. 
  • Look up the open access journal title in Sherpa Romeo (link below) to see what kinds of copyrights you retain and how you can share the different versions of your article 
  • Look up the journal on Beall's List and/or Predatory Reports to be sure that the journal is not listed as a predatory publisher or vanity press (for more information on predatory and vanity publishers, please visit the predatory journals page of this guide). 
  • Look up the editors of the journal and contact them directly to ensure they are practicing and credentialed academics/scholars. 
What NOT to Do: 
  • Do not answer emails soliciting original work to an open access journal based on your previous publications unless you are familiar with the journal, publisher, and editorial staff. 
  • Do not answer solicitation emails asking for your previously published work to be featured in an anthology or open access journal.
  • Do not always trust journals with small APCs (between $75 to $200). Many of these are predatory and do not perform quality review. 
  • Do not publish an open access article before reading the publisher-author copyright agreement. 
  • Do not publish open access before checking with a colleague or librarian about the journal if you have never heard of it. 

Helpful Resources & Links

Benefits of Open-Access Publishing 
  • While your work is shared freely with the public, YOU keep the copyright and can share it on any platform you deem fit. 
  • Your research is more accessible and visible, which means that it is more likely to be cited and/or shared through popular media. 
  • Open-Access is available to the public and avoids large profits from commercial publishers through expensive paywalls and inflated institutional subscription packages. 
  • Open-Access and data facilitates the advancement of science.
Disadvantages to Open-Access Publishing 
  • Open-access publishing often requires the author to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) and many academic departments do not provide subsidies for APCs. 
  • Predatory journals and publishers reside in the open-access realm. They collect smaller APCs and solicit for publications, however they provide little to no peer-review and other publishing services that provide quality control for published science. 
  • Junk science and methodologies/papers motivated by political, religious, and monetary bias are published within the open-access realm.
  • The number of high-quality open-access journals varies across the disciplines. 
  • Some open-access models include "mega-publishers" (PLoS, MDPI, etc.) that exist by publishing a large amount of content. These publishers may or may not be predatory, however, the amount of published science has the potential to lessen the perceived impact of peer-reviewed, evidence-based published science. 

Types of Open-Access Publications 

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There are several types of journal open-access policies. The journals are not always immediately transparent about which type of journal they are and sometimes they have different copyright and sharing policies for each article. Below is a list of the typical open-access publication types. Always refer to your publication license to find out what your copyright to your research output allows. Feel free to use Sherpa Romeo and the SPARC author rights site (above). 

Gold 

Publisher makes articles fully available and accessible to the public under a Creative Commons license or similar license. The article's author or an institution pays an Article Processing Charge (APC). APCs can vary from as low as $100 to as high as $12,000. For the most part, Gold OA journals are entirely open-access. 

Hybrid

Journals that publishes BOTH open-access articles and proprietary subscription articles. Authors are allowed to pay to make the articles open access. Occasionally a funding agency will require the research to be published open access or made available in a repository. In a sense, Hybrid journals get paid by the authors for open access AND by institutions for access to the journal. While the OA articles are free without subscription, the paywalled articles require purchase. 

Diamond/Platinum

Journals that publish articles as open access but DO NOT charge APCs. These journals are subsidized by institutions, advertising, or philanthropy. 

Bronze

Journals that are free to read online but do not have a clearly identifiable license OR the license is not posted. 

Green

Allows for self-archiving and/or sharing of your work. Generally using a pre-print or post-print version in an institutional repository or other researcher network.

Grey

Access to the articles are made available by the author through a repository or scholarly social network with an author's affirmation that the have the right to distribute the work. 

Black

Black open-access refers to the illegal sharing and distribution of scholarly proprietary content through piracy. 

Types of Publication Prints 

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Depending on the publisher and specific journal, an author may or may not have rights to share certain versions of their paper/manuscript. Most subscription/proprietary journals do not allow for any sharing of the manuscript, especially the publisher's version. The website Sherpa Romeo lists several journal's copyright guidelines for published articles (link above). Below are the definitions of the versions of articles: 

Pre-Prints

The author's copy of the manuscript before it's been reviewed or pre-reviewed. These are often found in institutional repositories and often linked in Google Scholar. These versions are technically NOT peer-reviewed as the edits suggested by the peer-reviewers have not been implemented. Pre-Prints can be manuscripts finished BEFORE submission OR they can be manuscripts that are accepted, but yet to go through peer-review. They may also appear in social sharing research networks like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, ArXiv (multiple platforms), and other similar platforms.   

Post-Prints

The author's copy of an article after it has been accepted and peer-reviewed. These versions are not yet formatted for the final version that will appear in the print version of the journal issue or in the electronic issue. These also are often found in institutional repositories and occasionally linked in Google Scholar. They may also appear in social sharing research networks like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, ArXiv (multiple platforms), and other similar platforms. 

Publisher's Version 

The version a journal's publisher edits and formats for the final published version of the article. These are the versions that will appear in subscription research databases and behind journal paywalls. 

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