Ohio University Libraries’ support of Open Access publishing continues to remove financial barriers for researchers

Ohio University Libraries is pleased to report that its Open Access publisher agreements have unlocked 57 new faculty publications from subscription paywalls in the last year, increasing the scholarly reach and impact of OHIO’s researchers.

Open Access is the practice of publishing scholarly work without any subscription barriers to access. Publication costs, called Article Publishing Charges (APC), are covered upfront, enabling OHIO-authored articles in prestige publications to be freely available to readers.

Ohio University Libraries’ publisher agreements defrayed more than $227,000 in upfront costs for these 57 Open Access journal articles. Since its inception in 2022, the Open Access publisher agreements have saved OHIO researchers $971,705 in APCs, unlocking 280 articles at no additional cost to the Libraries or to the University. 

“I was delighted to know that Ohio University now has an APC waiver for American Chemical Society journals,” said Dr. Sumit Sharma, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “These are high-quality journals that we in chemical engineering focus a lot on. We were able to make our paper open access earlier this year because of this arrangement. This is extremely useful for reaching a large audience.”

Since 2022, Ohio University Libraries has offered OHIO researchers a pool of funding through OhioLINK, Ohio’s statewide academic library consortium, to cover the upfront costs of publication via publishers like Cambridge, Elsevier, Institute of Physics, Springer, Wiley and the American Chemical Society. In addition to OhioLINK’s investment, Ohio University Libraries has agreements in place to cover some or all APC charges with Company of Biologists, BioMedCentral and SpringerOpen. This benefit is open to any member of the University who is looking to publish. Faculty, students and staff are all welcome to use this funding.

“As associate dean for Research, I routinely encourage faculty to take advantage of OhioLINK's transformative publishing agreements,” said Dr. Janet Simon, interim dean of the College of Health Sciences and Professions. “These APC waivers and discounts remove financial barriers to publication, allowing faculty to disseminate their work more broadly and maximize the visibility and impact of research conducted at Ohio University.”

OhioLINK’s funding limit expires on Dec. 31 and replenishes every January. Due to the popularity of this initiative, OhioLINK’s funding limit for APCs are often reached sometime during the fall semester or sooner, so OHIO researchers planning to publish Open Access with one of these publishers are encouraged to verify their OhioLINK affiliation with the publisher as soon as their manuscript is accepted. 

Ohio University Libraries now provides a regularly updated “Funds Used by Publisher” tracker on its Open Access Fees webpage, which also has additional information about open access and the transformative agreements OhioLINK and Ohio University Libraries have with publishers.

• Not sure how to proceed? Ask University Libraries through this questions form.

In addition to negotiating transformative agreements, Ohio University Libraries and OhioLINK also provide support and guidance to researchers on Open Access publishing including information on open access journals, funding opportunities and compliance with funder mandates for Open Access. For more information, see this guide about Open Access options. 

By actively supporting Open Access publishing through transformative agreements and providing resources for researchers, Ohio University Libraries and OhioLINK are playing a crucial role in advancing Open Access and making scholarly research more accessible to all.

For more information about Ohio University Libraries and OhioLINK's support for Open Access publishing costs, visit the Ohio University Libraries website.