As part of the UA Libraries Commitment to Open, we dedicate an increasing percentage of our information access budget each fiscal year to support national and international initiatives designed to transform how research and scholarship is shared.
We do this by:
- Supporting the publication costs of UA-affiliated authors
- Supporting initiatives and projects that advance open access and open research
How we support authors
We support UA-affiliated authors who publish in open access journals through institutional memberships and agreements with specific publishers. UA authors benefit from pre-arranged discounts or waivers on article processing charges.
Memberships & agreements
Overview:
We have signed a transformative agreement with ACM for UA-affiliated corresponding authors that provides a complete waiver on all Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated with open access publication in ACM journals. Authors who elect open access may select a Creative Commons license for article sharing and reuse. Authors can opt out of the open access arrangement and publish behind a paywall if they so choose.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals: Research articles in all ACM journals, proceedings, and magazines
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Fees (APCs)
More information:
- More about the ACM's Open Model
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu.
We have signed a transformative agreement with the Biochemical Society (Portland Press) covering publication in any of the Society’s seven journals.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals:
- Biochemical Journal
- Clinical Science
- Neuronal Signaling
- Bioscience Reports
- Biochemical Society Transactions
- Essays in Biochemistry
- Emerging Topics in Life Sciences
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- UA corresponding authors should indicate their institutional affiliation as UA during the submission process. We highly recommend that UA authors also use their UA email address, as use of the UA email domain (@arizona.edu) also confirms the UA affiliation.
More information:
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu
We are an institutional member of BioMed Central which entitles UA corresponding authors to a 15% discount on APCs for BioMed Central (BMC) and SpringerOpen titles.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals: Any of the BMC or SpringerOpen journals
Discount or waiver: Fifteen percent (15%) off the Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- Please see BMC’s "Submission Guidelines for Authors Requesting a Membership Discount" for exact directions when submitting your manuscript. The corresponding author must be affiliated with UA for the discount to apply.
More information:
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at >open-access@email.arizona.edu
We have signed a transformative Read and Publish agreement with Cambridge University Press (CUP) that provides a complete waiver on all Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated with open access publication.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals: All CUP Journals with an OA option. This agreement excludes small number of society-owned journals and articles ineligible for APCs (e.g., book reviews, editorial material)
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- UA-affiliated corresponding authors must indicate their UA institutional affiliation at the time of submission. We highly recommend that UA authors also use their UA email address, as use of the UA email domain (@arizona.edu) also confirms the UA affiliation.
- UA authors will also have the option to retroactively convert articles published non-OA in CUP journals during the three (3) term of this agreement (2021-2023). Any request to convert to OA must be made in the same year that the article was published.
More information:
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu
- Step-by-step guide to Publishing Open Access in Cambridge journals
We have signed a transformative agreement with the Company of Biologists that provide a complete waiver on all Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated with open access publication.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals:
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- UA-affiliated corresponding authors must indicate their UA institutional affiliation at the time of submission. Please use your UA email address, as use of the UA email domain (@arizona.edu) is required.
Any article with a UA-affiliated corresponding author accepted for publication in any De Gruyter fully open access or hybrid journal is eligible for open access publication at no charge.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals: All De Gruyter fully open access and hybrid (subscription journals that provide authors the option to pay to publish their articles open access) titles
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- Corresponding authors must use their UA email address (@arizona.edu) and list the University of Arizona as their institutional affiliation.
More information:
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu
We have signed an agreement with the Electrochemical Society that provides a complete waiver on all Article Processing Charges (APCs) for open access publication in 2 of the Society’s journals.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals:
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- UA-authors must notify IOPScience (publisher of the ECS journals) of their eligibility for an APC waiver when submitting to the journal. We highly recommend that UA authors also use their UA email address, as use of the UA email domain (@arizona.edu) also confirms the UA affiliation.
More information:
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu
We are an Frontiers Media institutional member, which provides UA-affiliated authors with a discounted article processing charge (APC).
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors and co-authors
Eligible journals: All Frontiers journals
Discount or waiver: 10% discount on APCs
How to receive the APC waiver:
- Authors should indicate their affiliation with University of Arizona during the submission process by using their UA email address (@arizona.edu). If submission is done with another email domain, but the University of Arizona is indicated as the author’s affiliation, Frontiers will verify eligibility for the discount with the University of Arizona Libraries.
More information:
- If you do not see the discount applied to your invoice or if you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu.
We have signed a transformative agreement with IOP Publishing that fully waives open access publishing fees in any IOP journal.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals: All IOP journals
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- UA corresponding authors should indicate their institutional affiliation with University of Arizona during the submission process
More information:
- More information is available at IOP’s Open Access portal and the IOP FAQs for authors.
We participate in MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) through which UA-affiliated authors receive discounted article processing charges (APCs).
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals: All MDPI journals
Discount or waiver: 10% discount on APCs
How to receive the APC waiver:
- Authors are prompted in the last step of submission process to determine if they are eligible for discounts under the MDPI IOAP program. The institution (UA) may be pre-selected if the author is submitting from within the network of the institution (IP range detection).
More information:
- If you do not see the discount applied or if you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu.
We have joined the Microbiology Society’s Read and Publish institutional deal that provides all UA-affiliated corresponding authors with fully-waived APCs for articles published in any of the Society’s six journals.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals:
- Journal of General Virology
- Journal of Medical Microbiology
- International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology
- Microbiology
- Microbial Genomics
- Access Microbiology
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- Corresponding authors must use their UA email address (@arizona.edu)
More information:
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu
We are an institutional member of PeerJ. The Library's "pre-payment account" covers the cost of a basic membership ($399) for each UA author that allows authors to publish one article per year for free with PeerJ.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated authors
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- When a paper is accepted for publication in PeerJ, University of Arizona authors should return to the UA PeerJ webpage to submit your claim for a Basic Membership and complete the email verification.
- Please note: If you are using your PeerJ membership to cover the APCs, all authors of the accepted article must have a paid membership (See the PeerJ FAQs for more information.)
More information
- Please visit the PeerJ-UA webpage for details about associating a PeerJ membership with UA.
- If you do not see the discount applied or if you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu
We've joined PLOS as a Community Action Publishing institutional partner, a publication model that more equitably distributes the cost of selective OA publishing among institutions.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated authors
Eligible journal: PLOS Biology
Discount or waiver:
- Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs) for UA-affiliated corresponding authors
- 25% discount on APCs for UA-affiliated contributing authors
How to receive the APC waiver:
- When filling in the institutional affiliation fields during the manuscript submission process (using PLOS’s Editorial Manager system), use the drop-down menu to select University of Arizona. Do not override the drop-down menu.
More information:
- More information about the PLOS CAP Plan and information for authors is available on the PLOS Publishing FAQs webpage.
- For more details about the submission process, see the PLOS submission instructional video or PLOS Flat Fee Agreements.
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu.
We have signed a two-year Flat Fee Agreement with PLOS that allows UA-affiliated corresponding authors to publish at no charge in 6 of the PLOS journals.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals:
- PLOS One
- PLOS Computational Biology
- PLOS Digital Health
- PLOS Genetics
- PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
- PLOS Pathogens
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- When filling in the institutional affiliation fields during the manuscript submission process (using PLOS’s Editorial Manager system), use the drop-down menu to select University of Arizona. Do not override the drop-down menu.
More information:
- For more details about the submission process, see the PLOS submission instructional video or PLOS Flat Fee Agreements.
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu.
We have signed an agreement with Rockefeller University Press that provides a complete waiver on all Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated with open access publication in RUP's three hybrid journals.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals:
- Journal of Cell Biology (JCB)
- Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM)
- Journal of General Physiology (JGP)
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- To receive the APC waiver, UA corresponding authors should indicate their institutional affiliation as UA during the submission process and use their UA email domain (@arizona.edu).
We have signed an open access membership agreement with The Royal Society that provides all UA-affiliated corresponding authors with a full waiver on the article processing charges (APCs) for all Royal Society journals. This discount will apply to both the Royal Society fully open access journals and hybrid (partially open access) journals.
Eligible authors: All UA-affiliated corresponding authors
Eligible journals: All Royal Society journals
Discount or waiver: Full waiver (100%) of all Article Processing Charges (APCs)
How to receive the APC waiver:
- When a UA author submits an article and selects an Open Access option on the Royal Society web site, they will be directed to a list of participating Member Institutions. Authors will then be asked to confirm whether their institution is a Member Institution and thus eligible for the APC discount.
- We highly recommend that UA authors also use their UA email address, as use of the UA email domain (@arizona.edu) also confirms the UA affiliation.
More information:
- If you have questions, please contact Ellen Dubinsky at open-access@email.arizona.edu.
How we support open access & research
We fund memberships and initiatives that have wide potential global impact, such as projects that develop open publication infrastructure or that convert portfolios of subscription-based peer-reviewed journals to open access.
Open access initiatives
We are a supporting member of arXiv, a free distribution service and an open-access archive for scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.
We are a member of COAR, an international association of libraries, universities, research institutions, government funders and others that works to support and advance the capacity, functionality, and future of open access repositories.
We are an academic library member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
We are a Silver member of the DSpace community, one of several open-source technologies stewarded by Lyrasis. The DSpace digital repository platform preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, audio/visual material, and datasets.
The Global Press Archive CRL Alliance is an academic-commercial partnership between the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) and East View Information Services. They have developed a series of thematically designed newspaper collections to provide access to rare, vernacular-language newspaper content from around the world.
Beginning in 2021, we are supporting Language Science Press in publishing 30 open access linguistics monographs per year with no author-facing book processing charges (BPCs). This support helps eliminates the financial barrier that many authors face when choosing open access publication. We have pledged to continue this support for three years through Knowledge Unlatched.
We are a founding institutional member of the Library Publishing Coalition, a community-led association of academic and research libraries and library consortia engaged in scholarly publishing. These library publishers preference open access dissemination and embrace new forms of scholarly communication.
We are a participating library in MIT Press's Direct to Open collective action model for open access publication of monographs. This funding initiative provides open access publication of all new MIT Press scholarly monographs starting in 2022 with no out-of-pocket costs for authors.
OAPEN promotes and supports the transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication. OAPEN provides services for publishers, libraries, and research funders in the areas of hosting, deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation.
We are a library member of Open Book Publishers (OBP), one of the largest independent open access academic publishers in the English-speaking world. Through our membership, all UA faculty, students, and staff have free access to the various formatted digital editions of every one of OBP’s titles.
We have joined the Open Library of Humanities' Library Partnership Subsidy system. Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is an academic-led, gold open-access publisher with no author-facing charges – the platform covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium, rather than any kind of author fee.
We are a member of the Open Textbook Network (OTN) which promotes access, affordability, and student success through the use of open textbooks.
We invest in PhilPapers, the online research hub in philosophy that serves as an open access aggregator and archive.
We are a charter member of PsyArXiv, the preprints database for the psychological sciences.
We are a Supporting Library Member of punctum books, an open-access publisher dedicated to radically creative modes of intellectual inquiry and writing.
Reveal Digital uses a library crowd-funding model in which libraries pool funds to develop open access curated primary source collections. We have contributed to the Documenting White Supremacy and its Opponents in the 1920s collection and are currently contributing to the Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements collection.
We are a participant in SCOAP3, the international partnership of 3,000 libraries, funders, and research institutions working to convert journals in the field of high energy physics to open access at no cost for authors.
We are a member of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), an advocacy organization and international alliance of nearly 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication.
We partner with several publishers that have switched to a Subscribe to Open (S2O) publication model. S2O allows publishers to convert journals from paywalled to open access, one year at a time. Rather than relying on author-facing charges (article processing charges) to underwrite the cost of open access publication, S2O asks institutional customers to continue their subscriptions. When a target number of subscribers participate, the publisher opens the content covered by that year’s subscription revenue.
Our S2O support includes:
TRAIL identifies, acquires, catalogs, digitizes and provides unrestricted open access to U.S. government agency technical reports.
We are a participating library in the University of Michigan Press’ new model of collaborative funding for open access monograph publication with no author fees. Fund to Mission aims at converting at least 75% of its monographs to open access by the end of 2023.
Suggestions?
Do you know of an open access project that you think we should support? Have you heard of another publisher that offers prearranged discounted article processing charges? Please share your ideas about how the Libraries can promote open access. Contact us at open-access@email.arizona.edu.