There are many opportunities to engage with open access at JMU. Did you know that the Libraries hosts several open access journals, here at JMU? And that we have workshops to learn how to publish an open access book? We also maintain an institutional repository for open access to articles, posters, and other scholarly and creative works. Read on to learn more!
JMU Libraries publishes a number of influential peer-reviewed journals that have editorial board connections to the university. Journals include the following.
JMU Libraries supports the Pressbooks platform for monographs. Learn more about how Pressbooks is an easy-to-use tool for creating online books and interactive course materials. JMU Libraries offers the “EDU version” of Pressbooks, which includes features that support teaching and learning. The final publication might be online, print-on-demand, and/or openly licensed. The following uses are encouraged:
Visit our growing catalog of JMU publications.
Join Publishing at JMU: Pub 101 and learn how to coordinate an open access publishing project with tools and support from JMU Libraries. This self-paced Canvas course offers a series of modules that you can take in any order, at any time. In addition to textbook design, you’ll learn how to manage a publishing project (including editing and intellectual property considerations) with a focus on workflows in Pressbooks. Learn more or sign up at any time.
JMU Scholarly Commons was established as the institutional repository and open access publishing platform of James Madison University (JMU) in 2013. The broad capabilities of JMU Scholarly Commons include: the dissemination of JMU student, staff, and faculty research including presentations, papers, posters, and selected multimedia works; the dissemination of electronic theses and dissertations produced by JMU students; the publication of JMU-based journals including peer-reviewed publications; conference proceedings for select JMU-sponsored events; dissemination of select digitized and born-digital materials from JMU Special Collections, and other materials related to James Madison University.
Browse or search JMU Scholarly Commons
At the point of publication, a limited number of possibilities exist for the copyright status of the work:
Copyright reversion
In some circumstances, an author's contract with a publisher causes the copyright to return from the publisher to the author after a certain period of time, or when the publisher ceases to publish the work. This situation most frequently arises with books that fall "out of print." Whether the possibility for copyright reversion exists, and the circumstances under which it can take place, will be specified in the publishing agreement or copyright transfer agreement the author signs with the publisher. For this reason, it is very important that authors retain a copy of their publishing agreement. It is often difficult or sometimes impossible to obtain another copy of the agreement, years after the work was published.
Retaining your rights
There are methods for you to retain your rights while disseminating your scholarship. If working with publisher, you may wish to negotiate your copyright with an author addendum. This addendum from SPARC provides a good starting point for conversations with the publisher.