Page last updated: 2025-09-10
The Libraries are a member of organizations that support Open Access and has agreements with select publishers that offer coverage of, or discounts on, Open Access fees (Article Processing Charges [APCs]) for Waterloo researchers.
OA Fee Coverage and Discounts - Agreement Details
If you have any questions about these agreements please reach out to copyright@uwaterloo.ca.
Libraries support for Open Access content and platforms
Aside from the agreements outlined above the Libraries also contribute to open access publishing organizations and platforms that rely on external funding to continue operations.
Supported content
Publishers
- American Physiological Society: Select journals are funded using the Subscribe to Open model, where libraries maintain their institutional subscriptions which fund publishing and access for all researchers and readers.
- Annual Reviews: Select journals are funded using the Subscribe to Open model, where libraries maintain their institutional subscriptions which fund publishing and access for all researchers and readers.
- Bioline International: Bioline International is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries.
- Mathematical Sciences Publishers. The Libraries support all five of MSPs Subscribe to Open Journals.
- MIT Press Direct to Open eBooks: By participating in Direct to Open, libraries shift from buying digital monographs from the MIT Press once for a single collection to funding them once for the world.
- Open Library of the Humanities (OLH): OLH is a charitable organization dedicated to publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). Funded by an international consortium of libraries who have joined in the mission to make scholarly publishing fairer, more accessible, and rigorously preserved for the digital future.
- punctum books: punctum books is "an independent open-access publisher dedicated to radically creative modes of intellectual inquiry and writing across a whimsical para-humanities assemblage."
- Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3): SCOAP3 aims to convert to Open Access the peer-reviewed literature in the field of High-Energy Physics by re-directing, on a global level, funds currently used to subscribe to these journals.
Journals
- EDP Sciences
- European Mathematical Society Press. The Libraries support three EMS Press journals. EMS Press publishes a total of 22 journals and all of them were made OA (free to publish in, free to read) through subscriptions from libraries around the world.
- Journal of Fractal Geometry
- Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici
- Journal of the European Mathematical Society
- Liverpool University Press
- University of Toronto Press
Supported platforms
- arXiv: Arxiv provides open access to e-prints in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics. Owned and operated by Cornell University.
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Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
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Dryad: Dryad is an international data publishing platform and community committed to the open availability and routine reuse of all research data.
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OpenCitations: OpenCitations is an independent infrastructure organization for open scholarship dedicated to the publication of open bibliographic and citation data using Semantic Web (Linked Data) technologies. OpenCitations has the potential to give institutions and individuals the ability to analyse and reuse publication citations in library collections, other infrastructures and in research. Funded through the CRKN and the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS).
- Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC): SPARC is a global coalition committed to making Open Access the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries through the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data and Open Education.
More information on Open Access can be found on the Open Scholarship Committee's Open Access page.