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OA Publishing @ SJSU (ScholarWorks)

All about Open Access publishing, including SJSU ScholarWorks, SJSU's institutional repository.

SJSU Library Supports Open Access Publishing

The SJSU Library supports open access publishing for SJSU faculty through read and publish agreements with academic publishers. These agreements allow the library to cover the cost of open access publishing for SJSU faculty.

About Read and Publish Agreements

Read and publish agreements expand traditional subscription agreements between the library and publishers to include support for SJSU authors to publish their work open access. You may also see these agreements referred to as transformative agreements. If we are able to negotiate these types of agreements with more publishers, we will continue to update the list below.

Elsevier

Through a pilot agreement between Elsevier and CSU, SJSU authors are able to publish open access in applicable Elsevier journals at no additional cost to the author. Learn more about the agreement between Elsevier and CSU.

Use Elsevier's journal search tool to find eligible titles.

Cambridge University Press

As part of an agreement reached through the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), SJSU authors can publish open access in Cambridge University Press Journals at no additional cost to the author. 

See which Cambridge journals are part of this agreement.

American Chemical Society

SJSU is one of over 50 California institutions to enter into a read and publish agreement with the American Chemical Society (ACS). This agreement allows SJSU authors to publish open access in ACS journals at a discounted rate. Learn more about the agreement with ACS.

IGI Global

SJSU has reached an agreement with IGI Global which will provide open access to a limited number of previously-published articles and book chapters by SJSU authors. Learn more about IGI Global's read and publish initiative.


Open Access Funds

At this time, the SJSU Library is not able to offer funding directly to faculty authors to subsidize the cost of Article Processing Charges (APCs). 

OA Journals without Article Processing Charges

While the SJSU Library is excited to support faculty publishing open access with Elsevier and other publishers, it is important to note that many open access journals have no article processing charges (APCs) and are free to both authors and readers.

The Preprint Cycle

The Lifecycle of a Scholarly Article

The lifecycle of the scholarly article starts with the Author's Draft. The author probably hasn't shopped the article to a journal yet, thus it hasn't been formally peer-reviewed. An author may decide to post their draft on a preprint server, such as medRxiv.org, to elicit public comment.

After revision, the author will submit their draft to a journal. The draft is then subjected to peer-review. The author has a chance to incorporate the suggested revisions or to address why the revisions aren't needed and/or relevant. Afterwards, the journal can accept or reject the article draft.

The author's manuscript is the final form of the content of the article. The manuscript will need to go through copyediting and typesetting before it will appear in a published journal. The author's manuscript may be made available to the public through an institutional repository or article archive. This might be required if the article is output from a grant-funded project.

Once the final copyedits and formatting have been completed, the article will be published in a print or online journal. Now it's a journal article.

If the author's draft was deposited in a preprint server, the author may replace that preliminary version with the final published version. Repositories like medRxiv try to point users to the final published version, where available.

Graphical representation of the publishing lifecycle. Image is described in text.

What is PMC?

PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine. Much of the articles found in PMC are the outputs of federally-funded research.

The flowchart above shows the different forms of articles that you will find in PMC. PMC gathers mostly author manuscripts (peer-reviewed and accepted for publication) and journal articles (final formatted version as it appears in a print or online journal).

The NIH started adding eligible preprints to PMC in 2023. Eligible preprints must

  • Acknowledge direct NIH support and/or have an NIH-affiliated author; and
  • Be posted to an eligible preprint server on January 1, 2023 or later.

More information can be found at the NIH Preprint Pilot website.