Open Access - Open Knowledge
One key reason universities and libraries exist is to share ideas and information. The University Libraries at Virginia Tech has a commitment to sharing ideas, research, and scholarship as openly as possible. We value creation of openly accessible educational resources, open access (OA) publishing, and open knowledge initiatives. This page is a starting point for discovering the wealth of open resources.
On February 28 the University of California announced that it was terminating all of its journal subscriptions with the scholarly publishing giant Elsevier. The news sent shock waves throughout the world of higher education—not just in America but globally. Why? Because Elsevier is the world’s largest publisher of scientific research and the University of California (UC), with its ten-campus system, is one of its largest customers. The impact on Elsevier was immediate: its parent company, RELX, saw its stock drop nearly 7 percent in the aftermath of the UC announcement—and its value still has not yet recovered.
In Virginia we are paying special attention to the situation because our own research universities, including Virginia Tech, have a similar journal subscription agreement with Elsevier that is set to expire in two short years. Millions of dollars are at stake in Virginia. Globally it is in the billions.
Read our Open Access Support statement.
For more information on how to find open resources see: OA journals, OA books, open images, open repositories, open databases, open textbooks, open learning objects, Post/pre-print servers, Special Collections Online.
Many Open related events and workshops can be found posted on PDN. For more events and recordings of past events see:
Tools that encourage open research, e.g. Open Science Framework, Overleaf, ORCID, VT Github, open repositories, open dataset sources, open source software communities (Software Carpentry).
OA search tools that can help find openly available research: OA Button and Unpaywall (browser extension for Chrome and Firefox).
OA Subvention Fund
The open access subvention fund (OASF) in the University Libraries at Virginia Tech subsidizes article processing fees for scholarly peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication in open access. OA fees are often also reduced through discounts offered by University Libraries' memberships and subscriptions. Interested authors should begin by reviewing the VT OASF Guidelines and then completing the Open Access Subvention Fund request form. For more information contact Gail McMillan (Director, Scholarly Communication): gailmac@vt.edu.
Open Education Initiative Faculty Grants
Open Education Initiative Faculty Grants encourage the use of existing and creation of new openly licensed information resources to support student learning. Virginia Tech faculty are invited to apply for competitive grants up to $3,000. Additional literature on open educational resources and example projects are available in the Open Education Lib Guide. For complete information on the Open Education Initiative Grants, please download the Grants Information document. To apply visit the online application. For more information contact Anita Walz (Open Education, Copyright & Scholarly Communication Librarian): arwalz@vt.edu.
TOME OA Monoagraph Initiative
Virginia Tech is one of 12 participating universities in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), which was launched in 2017 by the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of University Presses (AUP) to support the publication of open access, digital monographs. TOME is designed to advance the wide dissemination of long-form, peer-reviewed scholarship by humanities and humanistic social sciences faculty members. Click here for more information on Virginia Tech’s role in TOME.
VT Publishing is committed to increasing the visibility, reach, and impact of research produced at Virginia Tech. Through VT Publishing, faculty, staff, and students can publish a wide range of openly-licensed scholarly and educational materials including journals, books, textbooks, and born-digital online projects. VT Publishing also consults on all aspects of publishing regardless of an author’s intended publisher.
The VT Commission on Research’s Open Access Policy Working Group has proposed a draft policy that gives faculty the legal right to deposit their accepted manuscript of a scholarly article in the university repository, VTechWorks. This will maximize the dissemination of research and benefit authors and the university. For more information on the Open Access Policy look for PDN Sessions or contact Philip Young (Institutional Repository Manager): pyoung1@vt.edu.