Open access publishing has received considerable attention in recent years and has
increasingly become a viable means for faculty, staff, and student authors to make
their works available to the scholarly community in a timely manner. A growing number
of discipline-specific, rigorous, well-respected, peer-reviewed open access journals
are now available to scholars exploring publishing options beyond traditional publishers
operating on a customer pay basis. Such journals often embargo article submissions
for extended periods of time, thus delaying readers’ access to timely research – an
issue that is particularly problematic in the natural sciences.
Faculty, staff, and student authors interested in publishing their works in open access
journals are, however, often deterred from doing so because of the considerable article
processing charges they have to pay open access publishers for preparing their articles
for publication. These fees cover editing, layout design, and other associated work.
Depending on the journal, fees may range from $500 to $5,000 for a single article.
Processing charges for open access books can range from about $1,500 for a single
chapter to $7,000 to $15,000 for an entire book.
Pepperdine Libraries encourages open access publishing and provides Pepperdine-affiliated
authors several ways to offset these costs:
- support stipends provided by the the library
- institutional “read-and-publish” agreements with publishers allowing Pepperdine-affiliated
authors free open access publishing opportunities
- Digital Commons, our institutional repository
Support Stipends from Pepperdine Libraries
Faculty, staff, and student authors may receive up to $3,000 in total award money
each fiscal year. Student authors must collaborate with a Pepperdine professor who
can serve either as the primary author (first author listed) or senior author (last
author listed).
Up to $3,000 per author per journal article or book chapter per fiscal year (August
1 – July 31)
Up to $3,000 per author per book per year fiscal year (August 1 – July 31)
With their expertise in scholarly metrics and the publishing landscape, library faculty
are eager and ready to work closely with faculty, staff, and student authors to identify
appropriate open access publishers who may be a good fit for their articles, book
chapters, and books.
Institutional “Read-and-Publish” Agreements with Publishers
As a member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), Pepperdine
Libraries is part of several read-and-publish agreements allowing Pepperdine-affiliated
authors to publish articles open access at no cost. As part of their agreement, the
publishers listed below will cover the article processing charges on research articles
accepted for publication in their journals. For articles written by more than one
person, the author listed as the corresponding author must be from Pepperdine to be
eligible for the article processing charge waiver.
Cambridge University Press (valid until December 31, 2025)
All Pepperdine corresponding authors are offered open access publishing at no charge.
During the submission process, their institutional affiliation and email are used
to automatically associate with the SCELC agreement and, upon acceptance, are offered
open access publishing. Original research articles are defined as research articles,
review articles, rapid communications, brief reports, and case reports. Authors can
use Cambridge’s waivers and discounts page to confirm their eligibility ahead of time and view a list of the 387 journals covered by the agreement. Authors who published on or after January 1, 2021 may order open access retroactively within the same year of publication.
American Chemical Society (valid until December 31, 2025)
Any Pepperdine corresponding authors who wish to publish open access in all 79 subscription-based
and fully open access American Chemical Society journals can do so through a discounted
article processing charge of $3,000. Those who do not have research funds to pay the
discounted article processing charge can request full funding from SCELC.
If an author has grant funding for open access publishing, authors receive a discounted
$3,000 open access article processing charge. If the author does not have grant funding
for the article processing charge, the author can still choose to publish open access.
When they are asked if they have research funds to pay for the article processing
charge, they should select “seek funding” which will route the request to the SCELC
subscription pool.
Springer (valid until December 31, 2025)
Any Pepperdine corresponding authors who wishes to publish open access in any of the
2,068 hybrid journals contained within Springer, Palgrave, society-owned academic
journals on Nature.com, or Adis collections is eligible as long as their original paper, review paper, brief communication, or
continuing education publication is accepted. Two caveats:
Nature-branded or Scientific American content is excluded as are the 279 fully open
access journals in the Springer portfolio.
This agreement will provide free open access publication for up to 550 articles in
2023 across participating SCELC institutions (including Pepperdine University), which
is roughly 101% of the average number of qualifying articles that participating institutions’
corresponding authors published in those journals over the past three years. It is
possible that the SCELC consortium will collectively exceed this cap, but a historical
analysis of author open access opt-out rates and other factors makes this unlikely.
It is hoped that future agreements will be able to include a higher number of articles
and journals.
The Company of Biologists, Ltd. (valid until December 31, 2026)
Elsevier (valid until December 31, 2027)
All article publication charges (APCs) are now covered in full for any Pepperdine
corresponding authors who wish to publish open access for over 1,800 Elsevier hybrid journals pending acceptance in the journal. During this same time period, APCs may be covered
for an additional 685 gold open access Elsevier journals. We encourage you to use this benefit. It comes at no additional fee to Pepperdine
University or the Pepperdine Libraries as a result of a cost-neutral three year Read
& Publish Agreement negotiated between our library consortium SCELC and Elsevier.
To take advantage of this agreement, refer to the eligible titles lists for Elsevier hybrid journals and Elsevier Gold Journals. The corresponding author must be affiliated with Pepperdine and this role cannot
be reassigned once the article has been submitted.
While the number of open access articles published in hybrid journals (where open
access is optional) is unlimited, there are limitations in funding availability for
publishing in fully open access journals (where open access is mandatory) and Elsevier
has placed a cap on the amount that SCELC libraries can publish collectively in a
given year. Funding is first-come, first-serve based on when the article is accepted.
This means authors submitting to a fully open access Elsevier journal should be prepared
to pay the APC at acceptance in the unlikely event that the number of fully open access
journal articles published by SCELC institutions exceeds the limit in any given calendar
year. Authors can contact Marc Vinyard for questions before submitting an article.
Oxford Journals (valid until December 31, 2028)
Accepted papers from eligible Pepperdine authors are now being offered OA publishing
options under an agreement with Oxford University Press beginning February 4, 2025.
Articles accepted between January 1 and February 3, 2025, are not eligible. Eligible
authors must be the corresponding author. Eligible article types include research
articles, review articles, case reports or brief reports.
Important note: There is a difference in funding between hybrid and fully OA journals.
The agreement has some financial constraints that require this difference for it to
be sustainable.
Hybrid journals (350 titles):
- $1000 coverage of the APC; authors without grant funds available can request full
coverage
Fully OA journals (140 titles):
- Partial coverage of a set amount; no option for full coverage. Coverage for fully
OA is designed to increase each year of the agreement depending on OA uptake and author
contributions
- Year 1: $750 contribution towards the APC (increased due to UC voluntary contribution)
- Years 2-4: TBD
Nineteen journals are excluded from the agreement.
Publishing in Digital Commons, our Institutional Repository
Institutional repositories are open access, electronic archives of manuscripts and
articles written by the researchers at specific institutions. Unlike the traditional
publishing model, these repositories allow researchers to retain their copyrights
to their manuscripts. However, institutional repositories rely largely on voluntary
contributions of papers at individual institutions. Many researchers are hesitant
to deposit their published manuscripts in their institutional repositories for a variety
of reasons, including that the policies of traditionally-published journals regarding
local archiving vary. Fortunately, we can include most articles in Digital Commons,
Pepperdine's institutional repository! Our librarians are available to help researchers
review each journal's rules and embargo period (usually in the 1-2 year range). The
benefit to Pepperdine-affiliated authors is that articles that are part of Digital
Commons get indexed in Google -- in full text -- thus broadening the reach of their
scholarly work.