Penn State University Libraries has expanded its agreement with the Public Library of Science (PLOS), a non-profit publisher of peer-reviewed open access (OA) research journals. The Libraries has also expanded its support for open access monograph publishing by university presses.
Initiated through the Big Ten Academic Alliance in 2021 to cover PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine, the PLOS agreement was expanded on January 1 to cover open access publishing by Penn State researchers in all PLOS journals, including PLOS ONE, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, PLOS Water, PLOS Global Public Health and PLOS Climate.
Under the agreement, which extends through 2023, all Penn State corresponding authors can publish in any PLOS journal without incurring an article processing charge (APC). The published articles are open access.
For three journals (PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation), the agreement includes a discount for articles with a Penn State author who is not the corresponding author.
Penn State has a similar deal with Cambridge University Press, running from 2021 to 2023, that covers OA publishing charges for Penn State corresponding authors publishing in CUP journals with an OA option.
In 2018, Penn State joined Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) as a founding member. TOME is the result of a collaborative effort among the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of University Presses (AUP). Penn State’s Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost committed to funding $45,000 to support publishing open access monographs each year for five years (2018 to 2023). Each grant is contributed directly to a participating press for an open access publication of an eligible work authored by Penn State faculty.
In 2021, the University Libraries expanded support for open access monograph publishing by joining four university press initiatives: University of Michigan Press Fund to Mission Open Access Monograph Model, MIT Press Direct to Open, Lever Press, and Luminos.
Under its Fund to Mission program, the University of Michigan Press aims to convert at least 75% of its monographs to open access by the end of 2023, without any author ever having to pay. Support from the library community, including Penn State University Libraries, joins with funding from the University of Michigan Provost and other funder payments to help the press build a sustainable model by achieving stable funding for this monograph program.
Developed over two years with the generous support of the Arcadia Fund, MIT Press Direct to Open gives institutions the opportunity to harness collective action to support access to knowledge. As a participating library, Penn State will help open access to all new MIT Press scholarly monographs and edited collections from 2022.
Click here to read the original press release.
