Scholarly Communication and Publishing
Library Investments
The library, independently and in cooperation with consortial partners, has made strategic investments in a number of external initiatives supporting open access infrastructure or publication of open access journals and books from reputable publishers.
Open Access Infrastructure
- arXiv.orgCollection of pre-print articles in physics, mathematics, statistics and computer science.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)DOAJ is a major index of open access journals that includes quality criteria for inclusion. Illinois supports DOAJ in cooperation with the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA).
- Public Knowledge Project (PKP)PKP is a major developer of open access publishing software including Open Journals Systems (OJS), Open Monograph Press (OMP), and other systems. The University Library is a member of PKP and hosts installations of OMP and OJS for the Illinois Open Publishing Network, and an additional OJS instance for the student journals program.
Open Access Publications
- Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO)CLACSO is an international and renowned research group from Buenos Aires, Argentina that publishes academic literature from Latin America. The University Library contributed one-time funds in support of the CLACSO open access book initiative, and the titles are now available through JSTOR at the link above.
- Knowledge UnlatchedKnowledge Unlatched is an open access initiative that began as a funding mechanism to support open access book publication by university presses or other academic publishers. The University Library supported the initial years of open access book publication, and these titles are available in the library catalog and through OAPEN.
- MIT Press Direct to OpenThrough the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the University of Illinois supports shifting publication of new MIT Press titles to open access. The agreement also gives access to MIT Press ebook backfiles to the University of Illinois community where the titles were not published open access.
- Open Library of the Humanities (OLH)OLH is dedicated to publishing peer-reviewed, open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). OLH publishes academic journals from across the humanities disciplines, as well as hosting its own multidisciplinary journal. The University of Illinois supports OLH through a Big Ten Academic Alliance agreement starting in 2021.
- JSTOR Path to OpenThrough the Big 10 Academic Alliance, the University of Illinois is participating in a pilot for purchasing university press ebooks that are made open access after a 3-year period. The first 100 titles will be available to libraries in fall 2023, with 300 titles each year during the course of the pilot from 2024-26.
The items above include library support for original open access publishing. Additionally, the library has supported numerous activities to digitize and make available items from our collections, including through initiatives with the HathiTrust and Internet Archive, many but not all of which are freely accessible to the public.