Open Access at UMass Amherst

UMass has launched and participated in a number of initiatives aimed at increasing open access or more sustainable systems of scholarly communication.

Open Access Policy

As of July 1, 2016, UMass Amherst has an Open Access Policy. The policy was endorsed by the Faculty Senate on April 7, 2016, following negotiation between the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP) faculty union, and endorsement by the Faculty Senate's Research Council.
Read the FAQ for more information.

Open Access Activities at UMass

Open Access Week - Each year the Libraries celebrate Open Access Week, a week in October dedicated to promoting open access to scholarship, and focusing on open access issues and activities. See here for this and previous years' events.
ScholarWorks Institutional Repository - Making University of Massachusetts Amherst's scholarship available open access.
Open Access Journals published by UMass Amherst
UMass SOAR ("Supporting Open Access Research") Fund - established in 2014

Open Access Initiatives at UMass and Beyond

Name	Description
arXiv	arXiv is an electronic archive for research articles in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, and Statistics.
BioMed Central (BMC)	BMC is an Open Access biomedical publisher. UMass authors receive a 15% discount on article processing charges.
BioOne	BioOne, a nonprofit publisher, aims to make scientific research openly accessible. UMass subscribes to both BioOne1 and BioOne2.
Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI)	COAPI brings together representatives from North American universities with established faculty Open Access policies and those in the process of developing them.
Curriculum Open Access Resources in Economics (CORE)	CORE is an open access, interactive ebook-based course for anyone interested in learning about the economy and economics.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)	DOAJ is a community curated online directory that indexes open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Knowledge Unlatched (KU)	KU is a collaborative initiative to publish open access scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences.
Library Publishing Coalition (LPC)	The LPC is an organization dedicated to supporting libraries in their publishing initiatives, including open access publishing efforts. UMass is a founding member.
MDPI	MDPI, the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, is an academic open access publisher, established in 1996. UMass authors receive a 10% discount on article processing charges.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)	The NDLTD is a federated database of theses and dissertations.
Open Library for the Humanities (OLH)	OLH is a charitable organization dedicated to publishing open access scholarship without author facing article processing charges.
The Royal Society	UMass authors receive a 25% discount on article processing charges.
Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3)	The SCOAP3 initiative centrally supports article processing charges for participating journals at no cost for authors. Partners in participating countries contribute in proportion to their scientific output in the field of high energy physics.
Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)	SPARC is a key organization supporting scholarly communication initiatives and open access.

If you know of an open access or sustainable scholarly publishing project of interest, please let us know.