about Open Access
There are a number of benefits from either publishing your work Open Access or archiving it:
- Open Access publications have demonstrated the potential for greater citation
- Research is more discoverable
- Rapid publication
- Authors keep their copyright
- Taxpayers get access to tax-funded research
- Helps to eliminate inequalities in access to research
- Federal funders may require your publication to be Open Access
There are two ways to make your research Open Access. You can publish it in an Open Access journal. We recommend searching for an appropriate journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals, or making a consultation with a librarian to find a suitable journal for your research. You can also archive your work in a repository. Explore the publishing and archiving tabs in this guide to learn more.
You can participate in Open Access by archiving your research in a repository or publishing in an Open Access journal. You can archive your research in WyoScholar or a disciplinary repository for free - without changing how, where, and why you publish. By publishing in an Open Access journal, your research will become freely available immediately and typically you'll retain your full copyright.
Open Access + Publishing Services
Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are published under an open copyright license, frequently a Creative Commons license, that permits others to freely use, adapt, and share the material.
University of Wyoming Open Journals
UW Open Journals is a service provided by the University of Wyoming Libraries at no cost to our faculty, students, and staff. UW Open Journals is part of the larger Open Access movement and as such, all content found within our journals is freely accessible without paywalls.
University of Wyoming Press
The University of Wyoming Press publishes peer-reviewed works of scholarly, cultural, and social importance that are relevant to our state, region, nation, and world. As an imprint of the University Press of Colorado, we aim to advance and disseminate knowledge globally by publishing significant scholarly works and making them accessible.
University of Wyoming Pressbooks
The UW Pressbooks Network is a user-friendly web-based publishing tool that allows authors to import content and export the resulting publication to various formats, including EPUB and PDF.
Wyoming Data Repository
The Wyoming Data Repository (WDR) is a research data management system for the University of Wyoming and all Wyoming Community Colleges. WDR is a completely open access research data repository offered by the UW Libraries in collaboration with the Advanced Research Computing Center (ARCC).
WyoScholar Digital Repository
WyoScholar is an open-access repository of student publications, open educational
resources, open-access faculty publications, and other forms of gray literature.
Open access myths
You can participate in Open Access in two ways: publishing Open Access or archiving your research.
Open Access journals operate on a different funding model. It is not vanity publishing. The "article processing charge" business model shifts the cost and makes the content available to everyone.
The majority of Open Access journals do not charge fees. 60% of journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals do not charge an article processing charge to the author.
Open Access journals have the same standards of peer review, copyright, quality, prestige, and research impact.
Terms to Know
Open Access: academic publications that are free to read and often have various re-use rights
Article Processing Charge (APC): A fee charged to the author, institution, or funder to cover the cost of an article. This fee is in lieu of charging subscriptions to read the article.
Hybrid Journal: A type of journal in which some articles are published Open Access and others articles or not. Hybrid journals are typically longstanding journals that provide an Open Access option, and charge subscription fees.
Toll access journal: A journal that requires payment to access the scholarly content
Gold Open Access: Journals or articles that are Open Access at the time of publication whether with or without an APC
Article Processing Charges
Open Access journals do not charge subscriptions to libraries or individuals, instead, any associated fees are charged to authors publishing with them. These charges are known as Article Processing Charges, or APC's.
Not all Open Access journals or publishers will charge APC's, but researching beforehand can be critical. You will most commonly find article processing charges when publishing in a scientific journal or a hybrid journal.
Planning ahead for APCs is critical to successfully publishing open access, and preventing authors from being on the hook for paying these out of pocket.
Recommendations for addressing APCs:
- Consider your chosen publisher carefully and weigh the benefits of a higher cost, higher impact journal over a lower cost option
- If you are applying for a grant, you must include your estimated APC in the grant application itself!
- Most grants will not allow you to use extra funding to cover APCs unless they were outlined in the original documentation
- Some traditional publishers allow you to also publish open access in a secondary resource such as a repository like WyoScholar
If you have any concerns or want personalized assistance, please contact Sierra Pandy, the Scholarly Communications and Open Publishing Librarian, at spandy@uwyo.edu for a consultation.
Transformative Agreements
Transformative Agreements, sometimes called "Read and Publish" Agreements, are a different publishing model where the library partners with publishers to help cover article processing charges (APCs) for their users rather than paying for a subscription. The result is discounted or waived APCs for authors from that University if they publish in one of the agreed upon open access journals provided by the publisher.
Transformative Agreements are a unique option for Open Access publishing available to UW faculty, staff, and students. Please note that these agreements are constantly changing or being updated; UW cannot guarantee redemption of a listed agreement benefit to all authors who apply during the publication process.
If you have any further questions about Transformative Agreements, please contact the Scholarly Communications and Open Publishing Librarian.
Current Transformative Agreements at UW
More than 350 CUP journals participate in this agreement. For a full list of journals, please click here. UW authors can publish their work in these journals without incurring an APC. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published for free in a given year.
For a full instructional guide for authors on how to submit, please see this PDF file.
UW authors can publish their work in Company of Biologists’ journals without incurring an APC. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published for free in a given year.
The publisher has provided a full step-by-step guide on how to utilize this agreement - please see this link here.
UW authors will receive a 10% discount on APCs for work published in hybrid or gold Elsevier journals. You can search whether your desired journal is included in the agreement with this link here.
More than 70 journals participate in this agreement. For a full list of titles, please click here. UW authors can publish their work in these journals without incurring an APC. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published for free in a given year, and published articles must use a CC-BY 4.0 license.
A full guide for authors on how to submit to IOP has been provided by the publisher here.
The following journals are covered under this agreement: Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, Microbial Genomics, and Access Microbiology. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published for free in a given year.
More than 40 journals are covered in this agreement. For a full list of titles, please click here. UW authors can publish their work in these journals without incurring an APC. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published for free in a given year.
From the publisher website, here are their instructions:
- Double-check that you are listed as the corresponding author, both in our online submission system and in your manuscript
- Use your official institutional email address to submit your manuscript (this helps us to identify you)
- State your institute affiliation and email address in your manuscript and make sure this remains the same, even after submission
- Do not sign the standard license to publish; upon acceptance of your manuscript, you will be able to choose and sign the CC BY or CC BY-NC open access license.
For detailed author instructions, please see this PDF file.
More than 2,000 journals are covered in this agreement. For a full list of titles, please click here. This agreement will automatically cover the APCs for approximately 530 articles per year shared with the GWLA consortium on a first come, first served basis. UW Libraries cannot guarantee or set aside a free APC with the agreement. Once your article has been accepted, if there are still slots available you will be able to apply with the instructions below; otherwise it will say "no agreement available" for your chosen institution. These available slots will reset at the beginning of the calendar year.
For author instructions, please see this PDF file
Springer Nature has released an author guide for the GWLA consortium, viewable here.
Transformative Agreements FAQs
This depends on the publisher and agreement; additionally, journals that are included often update annually at the jurisdiction of the publisher themselves. For a complete list of what is included, please review the links for each publisher in the Current Agreements section. If you notice a list out of date, please email the Scholarly Communications and Open Publishing Librarian.
For most publishers we have a Transformative Agreement with, you should automatically get the appointed benefit upon applying and having a publication accepted as long as you specify your institutional affiliation and uwyo.edu email. However, some publishers may have special instructions or steps, so please review the agreement you wish to use and read the information before applying.
This can depend - sometimes we are approached by publishers and vendors directly, other times they are additional services we can add on annually when we renew our regular subscriptions. UW Libraries always strives to make the best resources available to our authors, and do what we can to offer agreements that meet the needs and most prolific fields being published in.
The exact Transformative Agreements, included journals, and benefit terms are subject to change annually. Please review this page prior to publishing to make sure you are applying for a current benefit.
UW Libraries wishes we could cover the publishing needs of every UW author, but unfortunately, we have little control over what journals a publisher chooses to include in the Transformative Agreement. If your dream journal isn't listed, but you still want to publish Open Access, there may be a peer journal from either the same or a different publisher we do have an agreement with.
Unfortunately, UW does not currently have additional funds to help cover authors APC charges. Outside of Transformative Agreements, we offer other OA publishing services such as space in WyoScholar, our Institutional Repository. More information on publishing options can be found within other pages of this LibGuide. For one on one help in looking at options for covering APCs, please contact the Scholarly Communications and Open Publishing Librarian.
