Support for Open Access Publishing

Open access (OA), as defined in the Berlin Declaration, is the “unrestricted, online access to peer-reviewed, scholarly research papers for reading and productive re-use, not impeded by any financial, organizational, legal, or technical barriers. Ideally, the only restriction on use is an obligation to attribute the work to the author.”

OA is a business model that transforms how scholarly publishing is funded by shifting the cost from paying for reading to funding publishing. OA publishing costs are covered by the author or their funder through an Article Processing Charge (APC), or by a library or another organization through licensing or membership fees.

OA resources remain the intellectual property of their creators, who have attribution rights as well as control over the integrity of their work, often through the use of Creative Commons licenses.

The Claremont Colleges Library strongly supports the mission and values of OA publishing in reducing barriers to the dissemination and accessibility of research to students, scholars, faculty, and researchers across the world.

We support OA publishing in various ways:

Through collectively funding the opening of specific scholarly books

The library has actively sought out and supported publication of open access e-book collections by both commercial and academic publishers. Through annual purchases of “direct-to-open” e-book collections from MIT Press, University of Michigan Press, and Knowledge Unlatched, and participation in one-off e-book initiatives from publishers like Bloomsbury, DeGruyter, Liverpool University Press, and JSTOR, the library has aided in the open publication of thousands of academic e-book titles.

Through memberships in OA sponsoring organizations 

The Library contributes membership fees that collectively fund the publication of selected books and journals, leading to elimination of direct cost to either publish or read those titles. As annual contributing supporters, we have also partnered with non-traditional or independent OA publishers, like Lever Press, Punctum Books, and Open Library of the Humanities, enabling the publication of high-quality academic literature that also focuses on delivering new perspectives and highlighting emerging and underrepresented perspectives.

Through supporting OA digitization projects and the creation of primary source archives

Ongoing financial participation in Eastview’s Global Press Archive project has enabled the digitization of over 40 newspapers from across the world, in languages ranging from Afrikaans to Arabic to Chinese, English, Russian, and Spanish. Many of these titles have been made openly available. In partnership with Reveal Digital, the library has supported the digitization and creation of three important archives in the area of social justice: American Prison Newspapers, Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Understanding Hate in America.

Through the “Subscribe to Open” (S2O) model 

This model is supported by continuing subscription costs allowing for opening the content for all to read as long as a financial target is met. Future years’ volumes could revert back to behind a paywall if support falls below target. As a supporting member of SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) the Library maintained its pre-existing subscription to 6 high energy physics journals at a lower inflation rate than the rest of the publishers’ content, while the collective efforts of the consortium opened 11 journals for Open Access reading. We also participate in Annual Reviews S2O.

Through transforming traditional journal subscriptions 

Renegotiation of traditional journal subscriptions into Read and Publish Agreements has allowed the publishers to repurpose some of the funding we have been paying for access to provide an OA publication allowance for TCC authors.

Through a variety of digital scholarship and publishing tools

These tools allow students, faculty, and staff to deposit their scholarship and data in digital publishing platforms such as the Institutional Repository Scholarship@Claremont, the Claremont Colleges Digital Library, a Scholarly Data Repository, and create and publish Open Educational Resources.