As part of a national consortium of libraries, the Libraries work to further the goal of expanding access to research through sustainable models. Our Libraries currently have 11 open access (OA) agreements with academic publishers that allow members of the University of Waterloo community to publish fee-free.
These agreements waive the cost of OA publishing in over 4900 journals, representing a transition in scholarly publishing models where libraries can both provide access to materials and help researchers make their work openly available.
How to discover if a journal is covered under a library open access agreement
The Libraries have a new tool that will save researchers time in screening whether a journal is covered under a library open access agreement. The Support for Open Access Search Tool allows researchers to easily search by journal title, subject area, publisher or ISSN to see details related to publishing models, license options and who is responsible for fees.
Alternative options for publishing open access
If a journal isn’t covered under one of the Libraries' OA agreements, there may still be options to publish OA without paying a fee. For example, some journals allow the accepted version of a paper to be openly accessible after an embargo period. More information is available on the guide to Tri-Agency Open Access Policy compliance.
There are also a variety of fully open access journals that do not charge fees. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides a list of 514 journals that do not charge fees and have the DOAJ seal (an indicator of journals that adopt best practices in OA publishing).
Learn more
Details of the Libraries' OA agreements can be found on the Support for Open Access page.
The Libraries are hosting two sessions during Open Access week (October 21-25):
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Publishing Open Access (for free!) as a Humanities Scholar: Wednesday, October 23, 10 – 11 a.m. Register.
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Publishing Open Access (for free!) as a STEM Scholar: Thursday, October 24, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. Register.
Questions about how the Libraries support OA publishing can be directed to:
- copyright@uwaterloo.ca for questions about these agreements
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UWSpace Contact Form for questions about the self-archiving process