Message from the University Librarian:
Open-Access for Scholarly Communication

The UCI Libraries provide faculty with options for submitting articles to peer reviewed, open-access digital journals and archives that provide high-impact dissemination and long-term preservation of scholarly information that benefits the academy and society.

The escalating costs of publications and increased publishers’ restrictions on use have created a crisis in academic libraries’ ability to acquire and provide access to research materials. To improve the situation, the UCI Libraries actively seek and support new publishing alternatives and business models that promote educational use and are economically sustainable.

I encourage you to consider two approaches: publishing in open-access journals with reasonable pricing models, and depositing articles in open archives in your discipline. The Libraries provide financial support by paying institutional memberships that provide significant discounts (ranging from 100% to 20%) to UC authors on publication fees for publications such as Public Library of Science journals, Nucleic Acids Research, the Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Science, and BioMed Central journals. We also co-sponsor open-access journals such as those from Geometry & Topology Publications, Project Euclid, and many others. These publications’ copyright agreements with authors generally enable broad dissemination and re-use of materials. Publication costs are supported by low subscription costs, author submission charges (usually covered by grant funds), and various types of subventions from scholars’ home institution, libraries, or private funding. Open access is spreading to an expanding number of disciplines.

Rigorous peer review and high standards are the hallmarks of a number of open-access publications. Public Library of Science is a prime example; others can be found in the Directory of Open Access Repositories. The National Institutes of Health recently issued its Public Access Policy that calls upon scientists who have received NIH funding to submit their publications to the PubMed Central open access archive within 12 months of final publication.

The UCI Libraries will assist academic units that wish to participate in the University of California’s eScholarship repository, which provides open access to items such as pre-prints, post-prints, working papers, and seminar papers (see related article in the winter 2005 issue of UCI Libraries Update).

Open-access journals and archives increase information exchange among scholars, thus advancing research. They also make more resources available for instructional purposes and to the general public for the advancement of society. While open access may not solve the publishing crisis, with our support it has the potential to make a significant contribution.

SCAMP, the Libraries’ Scholarly Communication and Management Program, provides contacts and more information.

Gerald J. Munoff
University Librarian