Authors who are faced with a publication contract that seeks transfer of the copyright should not hesitate to negotiate new terms or at least to reserve rights to use their own work in future teaching and writing and publish their work in a repository or find a different publisher. There are resources that can help in making decisions about their copyrights.
Resources:
JMU Libraries has some agreements in place to reduce costs associated with Article Processing Charges (APCs) for JMU faculty publishing in open access journals. JMU Libraries has no central fund to provide APC support.
VIVA and ACM have partnered to develop a new, consortial read and publish agreement. Corresponding authors at the participating institutions will be able to publish articles in ACM journals, magazines, and proceedings as Open Access with no fees to the author (the agreement does not include books or book chapters) from October 1, 2021 to December 31, 2024. Authors who do not wish to publish OA may opt out and publish their work as subscription-only. Users will continue to have full read/subscription access to the content in the ACM Digital Library.
Author instructions can be found at the VIVA website.
VIVA and ACS have partnered to develop a consortial read and publish agreement, beginning January 1, 2024. Corresponding authors at participating institutions will be able to publish open access articles in ACS journals at no cost.
Author resources for publishing OA are available at the ACS website.
VIVA has a contract with Cambridge that allows any JMU corresponding author who publishes in Cambridge’s open access journals (either full or hybrid) to do so without paying APCs (since they are built into the cost to us). Author instructions and the list of journals that are included in this deal are available on the Cambridge website.
Read the "Cambridge OA Author Instructions" below to learn how to make your article open access via the Libraries' agreement.
VIVA has started a three-year read and publish agreement with the International Water Association (IWA) that will allow corresponding authors at all VIVA institutions to publish open access articles in IWA journals and expand reading access for this content as well. Corresponding authors at VIVA institutions will be able to publish journal articles open access at no cost from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025 in these journals.
Author instructions are specific to the journal and can be found here.
VIVA and IOP have partnered to develop an agreement that will allow corresponding authors at all participating institutions to publish open access articles within almost all of IOP’s journals at no additional cost from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2024. This includes 58 hybrid journals as well as 18 fully (Gold) open access journals, with CC BY 4.0 as the standard license. NB: The American Astronomical Society (AAS) journals are open access but their OA publishing fees cannot be included in IOP transformative agreements at this time.
All qualifying articles will be identified by IOP Publishing and published by default on an open access basis. All fees related to open access on eligible articles are covered; other charges such as page or color charges are not included and will continue to be charged to authors.
More information about IOP transformative agreements is available at the IOP website. The author workflow is available on this guide.
Starting January 1, 2024 VIVA is beginning a new two-year partnership with PLOS. As part of the Flat Fee Agreement, corresponding authors at participating institutions can publish open access at no cost in seven PLOS journals: PLOS Complex Systems, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS ONE, and PLOS Pathogens.
VIVA and Rockefeller University Press have partnered to develop a new, consortial read and publish agreement. Research articles by corresponding authors at VIVA member institutions are published immediate open access under a CC-BY license, directly deposited to PubMed Central (PMC) and subsequently to Europe PMC, and archived in LOCKSS/CLOCKSS and Portico, from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023. VIVA institutions also receive unlimited access to all content published in RUP's three hybrid journals — Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), and Journal of General Physiology (JGP)—immediately after publication.
Author instructions can be found at the VIVA website.
VIVA has entered into a consortial read and publish agreement with Springer Nature, beginning January 1, 2024. Corresponding authors at participating institutions can publish open access in Springer Hybrid journals at no cost. More information can be found on the VIVA page.
VIVA and Wiley have partnered to develop an agreement that includes journal subscriptions as well as Open Access publishing funds for both hybrid and fully gold journals. Authors at the participating institutions will be able to publish articles in either Wiley fully gold open access journals or as individual articles in Wiley's extensive list of subscription journals, from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2024.
Note that for fully Gold journals, funds are allocated at the time of manuscript submission. Manuscripts must be submitted for publication consideration January 1, 2021 or after to qualify for the funding. For hybrid Open Access articles, funds are allocated at the time of publication. Manuscripts must be accepted for publication after January 1, 2022 to qualify.
Author instructions and an FAQ can be found at this VIVA website.