Open Access at UT Austin

Does the Libraries have a general fund to help pay article processing charges (APCs)?

No. As a research intensive university, it wouldn't be possible for us to pay all APCs and still subscribe to journals and purchase books. Instead of an APC fund, the Libraries is participating in several different kinds of OA deals which provide OA in a more financially sustainable way. You can refer to the OA Support for UT Authors tab to find out what help is available.

How do you determine what OA initiatives to participate in?

We use a funding framework and criteria to help us determine what initiatives to support. Our main criteria are to provide high quality information for our users, make sure that information is easily discoverable and accessible, and support initiatives with sustainable business models.

Does the Libraries have a publishing program?

UT Libraries offer publication support through hosting of open access journals on the Open Journal Systems platform and through publication of works in Texas ScholarWorks (TSW) and Texas Data Repository (TDR). We do this in cooperation with the Texas Digital Library (TDL). Please see the UT Austin Repositories tab for more information on TSW and TDR.

For those interested in publishing an OER (open educational resource) book, we offer the Pressbooks platform. Please contact Heather Walter for more information about Pressbooks.

How can I suggest an OA initiative for the Libraries to support?

Please send a message to Colleen Lyon, Head of Scholarly Communications, c.lyon@austin.utexas.edu.

How can I learn more about open access at UT?

You can sign up for our monthly Scholarly Communications Newsletter that contains brief updates on scholarly publishing, open access, open education, and copyright.

Article processing charges (APCs - also sometimes known as article processing fees or APFs): A fee sometimes used for funding the publication of scholarly articles in an open access journal.

Author rights: The rights retained by the author when entering a contractual agreement with the publisher. Open access encourages authors to negotiate with publishers to retain the rights to control the re-use and distribution of the work.

Creative Commons: A licensing mechanism that allows authors to retain their copyright while providing some permissions for reuse.

Diamond open access: An open access model that does not charge readers or authors. Publishing costs can be supported through institutions, scholarly societies, or solely through volunteer effort. Also known as platinum open access.

Embargo: A publication embargo is the duration between the work's publication and the time it is freely available.

Gold open access: Research published in a journal that is immediately and openly available when published.

Green open access: Posting a version of a published work on an institutional or disciplinary repository, often with a link to the published work. The repository version provides the open access to the work.

Hybrid open access: Publishers make an individual article freely available after payment of an article processing charge, while still selling access to other articles through subscriptions.

Open access (OA): the principle that knowledge should be disseminated without restrictions or barriers.

Open science: Open science is the practice of scholarship in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes, and other research processes are freely available under terms that enable reuse, redistribution, and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods. The term open science is meant to be discipline agnostic.

Post-print: The accepted article after incorporating revisions and edits resulting from the peer review process. The article does not include the pagination and type-setting of the publisher's print. Also known as final accepted manuscript or author accepted manuscript (AAM).

Pre-print: The first draft of an article before peer review and the accompanying edits. Also known as the submitted version.

Read and Publish: An open access model that bundles payment for reading access and payment for publishing into a single contract. Also known as transformative agreements.

Repository - institutional/disciplinary: Commonly associated with green open access. Institutional repositories are managed by a university or organization to curate the scholarly output of the institution's researchers. Disciplinary repositories, such as arXiv, SSRN, and PubMed Central, collect scholarship on specific subjects regardless of the researcher's institutional affiliation.

Sherpa/Romeo: A searchable database of publisher copyright policies and policies on self-archiving.

Subscribe to Open (S2O): An open access model that converts traditional subscription journals to open access one year at a time using existing library relationships and payments. Institutions subscribe in the traditional manner and when sufficient revenue is collected, the journal is published OA. If the revenue goals are not met, then that year's content stays subscription only.

Version of record: The final published article in a publisher generated PDF file.