Research

Access to Penn State scholarly research expands through two new agreements

Penn State has entered into two open access agreements with Big Ten peer institutions through Penn State University Libraries. The agreements will increase the visibility and impact of Penn State research. Credit: Christie Clancy / Penn State. Creative Commons

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—As part of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), Penn State University Libraries recently entered into two agreements that will help to expand access to scholarly content, promote open access (OA) publishing and increase visibility of Penn State research.

The Cambridge University Press (CUP) OA read and publish journal agreement covers OA publishing charges for Penn State corresponding authors publishing in CUP journals with an OA option, which encompasses 92 percent of the journals in the CUP portfolio. Those articles will be immediately open access on the publisher’s platform. In addition, the agreement expands subscription access for Penn State users to all CUP research journals — currently more than 400 titles — more than doubling the number of CUP research journals Penn State users can access. Furthermore, the agreement reduces costs for the University Libraries when compared with the previous subscription-only agreement.

“This agreement is the result of open conversation with CUP, careful analysis and collaboration among BTAA institutions,” said Mihoko Hosoi, University Libraries associate dean for collections, research and scholarly communications. “We want to make it easier for Penn State authors to publish OA and for users to find those articles. We are excited about this new agreement because OA publishing increases visibility and impact of Penn State research.” 

Terms of publication for journal articles as well as a complete list of journals accessible through the agreement are available at the BTAA and Cambridge University Press websites. The agreement runs from 2021 to 2023.

The second agreement, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) Community Action Publishing (CAP) pilot agreement, will allow BTAA corresponding authors to publish in PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine without incurring fees. BTAA and PLOS will also collaborate on data, metrics and tools for institutions to evaluate OA publishing agreements. Further information is available on the BTAA website and the PLOS Community Action Publishing website. The agreement is also from 2021 to 2023.

For more information on both the Cambridge University Press and PLOS agreements, users and researchers should contact the liaison librarian for their academic discipline.

Last Updated January 29, 2021

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