The library has negotiated "Read & Publish" agreements with several publishers that cover open access publication fees (known as APCs or article processing charges) for Wesleyan authors. The library is actively working to expand this list and welcomes suggestions. We prioritize agreements that will provide the most benefit to Wesleyan researchers and with publishers who follow best practices for open access:
ACM Open (Association for Computing Machinery)
Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge across ACM’s complete catalog of journals, conference proceedings and magazines. The default Creative Commons license option is CC-BY, although the participating author has the choice to choose any of the Creative Commons license options. See instructions for authors.
Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge in any Cambridge University Press journals. Select Wesleyan University on this page for a full list of journals and submission instructions.
Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge in the CSHL journals Genes & Development, Learning & Memory, Genome Research, Molecular Case Studies, and RNA. To take advantage of our agreement, submit using the usual process. Upon acceptance of your paper, you will be able to indicate your choice to publish OA at no APC charge when you submit your License to Publish form.
Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge in any of the 5 Company of Biologists journals (Development, Journal of Cell Science, Journal of Experimental Biology, Disease Models & Mechanisms, and Biology Open). See this page for submission instructions.
Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge (CC-BY license) in IOP gold and hybrid journals. NOTE: The Electrochemical Society (ECS) journals are not included. See Author guide to submitting under a transformative agreement. This is a 3-year license: 2024-2026.
Mathematical Sciences Publishers
MSP switched five journals to a "subscribe to open" model in 2023 (Geometry & Topology, Algebraic & Geometric Topology, Algebra & Number Theory, Analysis & PDE, and Pacific Journal of Mathematics). Instead of paying for access, Wesleyan and other participating institutions contribute financially to support fee-free OA publication of all articles by all authors in these five journals. Since all articles will be published OA without APCs, there are no special submission instructions for Wesleyan authors.
Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge in six journals: Access Microbiology, International Journal of Systemic and Evolutionary Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, Microbial Genomics, and Microbiology. Corresponding authors will be able to check their fee-free eligibility and then indicate the Publish and Read route for OA during the submission process.
The MIT Press Direct-to-Open initiative "harnesses collective action to support open access to excellent scholarship." Rather than purchasing e-books from MIT Press, Wesleyan and other participating institutions contribute a fee to support OA publication of all new MIT Press monographs. Our participation also gives us access to the MIT Press back catalog.
Wesleyan covers all fees for publishing articles with Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors in any PLOS journals. Articles with non-corresponding Wesleyan co-authors are eligible for a 25% discount on APCs. Instructions for submission vary by journal:
Royal Society of Chemistry
Wesleyan-affiliated corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge in all RSC gold and hybrid journals. Author instructions: 1) Double-check you are listed as the corresponding author, both in the online submission system and in your manuscript; 2) Use your official institutional email address to submit your manuscript; 3) State your institute affiliation and email address in your manuscript and make sure this remains the same, even after submission; and 4) 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. This is a 1-year license for 2024.
Discounted APCs
MDPI
Wesleyan authors receive discounted article and book publishing. Discounts range from 15-100% for journal articles and are set at 10% for book processing. Discounts must be requested through the editorial office when submitting works for publication. Remaining publishing charges (fees not waived) are paid for by the author. Wesleyan authors receive free access to Susy, MDPI's online submission system.
Last updated January 2024
A free and easy alternative to publishing open access via a journal publisher is posting a copy of a conventionally published paper in a disciplinary or institutional repository (known as "green open access" publishing). Leaders in open access such as the Budapest Open Access Initiative advocate for the use of green open access over options that require authors to pay because green OA is open to authors as well as readers.
Preprints or accepted manuscripts in repositories are open, citable, and establish intellectual precedence
Making your work freely available in a repository and simultaneously publishing your article in a paywalled journal is effectively identical to paying APCs to publish Open Access in a journal from the perspective of career advancement and openness, since in both cases the article is published in the journal of your choice while also being freely available to anyone to read. Many scholars include links to paywalled and free versions of their articles on their websites and CVs.
Am I allowed to post my paper?
Virtually every journal allows the author accepted manuscript and in some cases even the published version (the "version of record") to be shared online. However, policies vary by journal. This handy tool allows you to search article sharing policies by journal. Please contact a librarian using the information in the sidebar if you need help understanding what a journal's policy means for you.
Where should I post my paper?
The best place to deposit your work is in a (multi)disciplinary preprint repository where your target audience is likely to see it, such as arXiv, PubMed Central, or socArXiv. Simmons University's Open Access Directory provides a list of disciplinary repositories. Wesleyan University Library manages generalist repositories for papers and data which are another good option for making your work open access.
"Diamond open access" journals are those which are free to authors and readers. These are possible thanks to volunteer labor (which is the basis of most paid journals as well), free digital publishing tools, and sometimes institutional financial support. They are typically published by and for scholars in a particular field.
While diamond OA is not often at the forefront of conversations about OA publishing, a recent study found that there are about 29,000 diamond OA journals currently active, and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes over 12,000 of them. If you're considering a diamond OA journal for a future publication, you can search the DOAJ by discipline, language, and other criteria.
