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Open Scholarship: How To Publish Open Access (Gold)

OA Publishing and APCs

"Gold" open access journals are journals that follow the typical processes of publication such as peer-review and typesetting, but publish their articles freely on the internet. These journals may be pure OA journals that only publish open access content, or they may be "hybrid" journals, which publish most of their content behind traditional paywalls, but allow certain articles to be publicly available.

Many, but not most, open access journal require article processing charges (APCs) from researchers to offset the cost of publication. While the majority of OA journals to not charge researchers, many high-impact hybrid journals can charge thousands of dollars in APCs.

How to avoid paying APCs when publishing your work OA:

  • Publish in journals that don't charge APCs
    • While this will exclude many of the most well-known journals, there are plenty of high-quality, high-impact journals that do not charge APCs
  • Budget for APCs in your grant proposals
  • Take advantage of the library's agreements that allow free OA publishing with select publishers (more details below)

Free OA Publishing through the Library

As an additional benefit to our faculty, students, and staff, the Gregg-Graniteville Library has entered into several agreements that enable USCA affiliated researchers to publish open access at no charge or a discount with the following publishers:

Publisher

Articles Covered

How to Publish Your Work Open Access

Cambridge

All accepted articles are eligible for OA publication. Includes both pure OA and hybrid journals. There are no APCs and there is no per-article cost for either the author or for USCA. 

List of eligible journals (Select University of South Carolina Aiken to see list of journals) 

Use your USCA email and list USCA as your institutional affiliation when submitting work to automatically qualify for free OA publishing.

Cambridge OA Publishing agreement

Springer

Articles accepted in hybrid SpringerNature journals will be given the option of making their article Open Access (freely and openly available) at no cost. USCA shares a large pool of OA article entitlements that should cover most or all of our expected output during the calendar year. The pool is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Usage patterns are monitored to ensure that all authors have an equal opportunity to publish their works as Open Access.

It is possible that we could run out of APC credits towards the end of a year. If that happens, authors will see a different message when their article is submitted. The entitlements will be replenished at the start of each year.
 

List of eligible journals

Use your USCA email and list USCA as your institutional affiliation when submitting work to eligible Springer journals. 

Open Access Agreement

Wiley

Authors whose articles are accepted in gold and hybrid Wiley journals (and some Hindawi journals), will be given the option of making their article Open Access (freely and openly available) at no cost. USCA shares a large pool of OA article entitlements that should cover most or all of our expected output during the year. The pool is a first-come, first-serve basis. Usage patterns are monitored to ensure that all participating authors have an equal opportunity to publish their articles as Open Access.

If entitlements run out authors will see a different message that says they are eligible for a discounted APC (instead of a fully funded APC via the shared entitlement program). Entitlements will be replenished at the start of each calendar year.

Wiley Journal Finder can help you find the best journals to match your manuscript 

Eligible Wiley hybrid journals 

Eligible Wiley and Hindawi Fully Open Access Journals

Exceptions: Not all Hindawi journals are part of the agreement, please check before you submit your article

Use your USCA email and list USCA as your institutional affiliation when submitting work to eligible Wiley journals. You will automatically qualify for free OA publishing.

Wiley Fully OA Publishing Guide

Wiley Hybrid OA Publishing Guide

American Chemical Society 

ACS Journals 

Accepted articles can publish their article in any ACS journal free of charge. 

ACS Open Access Publishing

Use your USCA email and list USCA as your institutional affiliation when submitting work. When your work is accepted you will be prompted to publish open access under the ACS Sponsored Read and Publish agreement. 
Sage

Authors publishing in SAGE Pure Gold Open Access journals, there is a 10% discount on APCs. These journals publish all content open access under a Creative Commons license.  Note that SAGE offers a variety of APC discounts, and some authors may be eligible for greater APC discounts due to society membership, first time SAGE authorship, or other discount mechanism.

Visit Sage Journals to determine if your journal is included 

Use your USCA email and list USCA as your institutional affiliation when submitting work to eligible Sage journals. You will automatically qualify for free OA publishing.

Sage will contact all eligible authors to inform them of the agreement as soon as their accepted article has been received into Sage’s Production department.

Sage OA agreement

 

Benefits of publishing OA

Publishing open access has many benefits for the researcher, including:

  • Greater citation rates than non-OA articles
  • Greater media coverage of research
  • The ability to retain your author rights and control the reuse of your research
  • Compliance with funder OA requirements

Contact Me

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Amanda Nunnelly-Stewart
Contact:
803-641-3510

Contact Me

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Natalia Taylor Bowdoin
she/her
Contact:
803-641-3492

nataliab@usca.edu
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