Skip to Main Content

Author Toolkit: Open Access Publishing

This guide provides resources to help authors navigate the processes of research, writing, publication, and dissemination of scholarly works.

What is Open Access?


Open access is a model of publishing that has a number of potential benefits to authors, to researchers, and to the general public.  

Open access (OA)  literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions....It is made possible by the internet and copyright-holder consent. - Peter Suber in Open Access

Discounts for UNMC Authors

McGoogan Health Sciences Library subscribes to journals from publishers who provide discounts that are available to UNMC through membership in the University of Nebraska Consortium of Libraries. McGoogan Library does not pay for article processing charges or any other fees charged to authors.

For current discounts, see our Open Access Publishing Discounts page.

How to Publish Openly?

Sharing your research openly can be achieved in a number of ways.  Any of these options support open access:

  • Review your publication agreement before signing it and tell your publisher you want to retain the right to deposit a copy of your work in your institution's online archive/repository.  At UNMC, our archive/repository is Digital Commons.  Some journals allow you to archive a copy of your article after an embargo period.  You can submit your article and set up an embargo period in Digital Commons, which will release a copy of your work after the embargo period.
  • Review your publication agreement before signing it and tell your publisher you want to retain the right to deposit a copy of your work in a disciplinary repository, such as PubMed Central.
  • Publish in an Open Access journal that is recognized by and listed in both DOAJ and OASPA. 

Find out how to work with publishers to retain your rights by using the Publishing Agreements page of this toolkit/guide.

Locating Open Access Journals

Pay to Publish?

Some publishers ask for fees, or article processing charges (APCs), to make your publication openly accessible.  Is this okay?

  • If the journal makes all of their publications available open access immediately, then there are no subscription fees.  In this case, APCs are the publisher's only revenue stream for the journal title.  In this case, charging APCs is reasonable.
  • If the journal makes only some of their publications OA, then the publisher receives revenue from both subscriptions to the journal and APCs.  In general, this is not considered a good practice.

Other considerations: How committed is the publisher to Open Access?  Is OA their main publishing model, or one of several?  And, what do they do with their revenue?

Not All Open Access Publishers are the Same

Just as there is a wide range of quality among subscription-based, or traditional, journals, there is also a wide range of quality among open access (OA) journals. 

A good rule for finding OA journals with sound publishing practices is to check for two indicators of quality:

  1. Is the journal listed in the the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?

  2. Is the publisher a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA)?

Both the DOAJ and OASPA follow important guidelines endorsed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Open Access Explained

by Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen, with Jorge Cham from PHD Comics. (8 minutes)