Scholarly Communications: Open Access Publishing

At this time, Gettysburg College does not have a distinct budget line to support APCs (Article Processing Charges).

However, there are still ways to publish in open access journals without author payments!

• The Library has "read-and-publish" agreements with some journal publishers (ex: Cambridge University Press, Company of Biology, American Chemical Society, Emerald, PLOS). These agreements provide Gettysburg authors the opportunity to publish open access articles, without a direct charge to authors. Please contact your liaison librarian with questions about "read-and-publish" publishing benefits.
• Faculty authors publishing in open journals with author-facing charges should apply for a Research & Professional Development Grant.
• Also, it never hurts to ask for a fee waiver. Contact us at cupola@gettysburg.edu for more detail!

To find open access journals in your discipline, search the Directory of Open Access Journals, or ask your liaison librarian to help you identify titles.

To evaluate the quality of an OA journal, use the Open Access Journal Quality Indicators created at Grand Valley State University.

Unethical publishers are sometimes called "predatory publishers." There is a growing industry made of "publishers" that operate in a couple of ways. Some contact new authors (particularly graduate/undergraduate student authors) and "offer" to publish their work in exchange for the copyright. They typically post the work on amazon or other sites and print a copy on demand for anyone who orders it (usually almost no one). Others create a fake journal which is not peer-reviewed or edited, and they charge authors for publishing in said journal.

If you receive a "too good to be true" communication about your scholarship, please be skeptical. Librarians are happy to help investigate the legitimacy of such communications.

• See I Sold My Undergraduate Thesis to a Print Content Farm (Slate, 3/23/14), especially if you are contacted by "Lambert Academic Publishing."
• This 4/7/13 NYT piece provides great background on this topic: Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)