Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Purdue Libraries Enters New Open Access Publishing Partnerships

February 22nd, 2021

West Lafayette, IN- Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies begins 2021 with new open access publishing partnerships with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Cambridge Press, and Public Library of Science (PLOS). Now, Purdue University authors interested in publishing their scholarship in corresponding journals can choose to retain copyright and publish their articles as open access, immediately and without embargoes, at no cost to them.  

The new partnerships represent a progressive evolution in Libraries’ existing relationships with all three publishers. In the case of ACM and Cambridge Press, Libraries now pays one fee to each publisher that covers both subscription access to journals, as well as the publishing costs for Purdue authors who decide to publish their articles as open access in the ACM Digital Library, or in one of over 400 included Cambridge Press journals, respectively. As a non-profit open access publisher, PLOS operates differently. Purdue’s membership in their Community Action Publishing (CAP) program means that Libraries now pays an annual fee for unlimited publishing in PLOS Medicine and PLOS Biology without incurring individual author fees. All three partnerships increase the reach of Purdue-authored research and support the University’s land grant mission to serve the greater community by expanding public access to a wealth of high-quality, scholarly content.  

Purdue is not alone in pursuing new partnerships in open access publishing. Both the Cambridge Press and PLOS agreements were made possible through the collective bargaining of the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s consortium of academic research libraries. In speaking of the new PLOS partnership, Maurice York, BTAA’s Director of Library Initiatives, says: “One of the key strategic questions in front of us is how to advance the growth of open science and open scholarship through collective and intentional action. We are actively seeking pathways to create a sustainable, scalable open knowledge ecosystem for our researchers and scholars.”  

The new open access publishing agreements align with Dean of Libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science Beth McNeil’s ongoing commitment to make access to high quality scholarship more economically sustainable at Purdue. “The benefits of open access publishing are numerous for both author and audience, but the associated cost often prevents authors from being able to take part, even when they agree with open access in principle,” McNeil says. “Our new partnerships with ACM, Cambridge Press, and PLOS will create greater opportunities for researchers and authors from most campus disciplines to choose cost-free open access publishing options and work with us to help make scholarship more equitable, now and into the future.”    

Purdue authors interested in learning more about the specific journals available through these new agreements and how to participate should visit Libraries’ new guide or contact Nina Collins, scholarly publishing specialist, at nkcollins@purdue.edu.