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Publish OA Without Any Cost to the Author

By tshank | October 23, 2023

The 2023 global Open Access week theme is Community over Commercialization. The Woods Hole science community has some opportunities to publish without article processing charges in open access publications which the MBLWHOI Library holds OA agreements with. Scientists who are corresponding authors may publish open access in the journals of the following publishers without paying any charges: Annual Reviews, The Company of Biologists, and the Microbiology Society.

The following titles allow Woods Hole corresponding author scientists (MBL, WHOI, SEA, WCRC, USGS-Woods Hole) an option to have the OA APC charges for their paper be paid by the agreements the MBLWHOI Library holds with those publishers.

  1. Development
  2. Journal of Cell Science
  3. Journal of Experimental Biology
  4. Biology Open
  5. Disease Models and Mechanisms
  6. Microbiology
  7. Journal of General Virology
  8. Journal of Medical Microbiology
  9. Microbial Genomics
  10. International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology
  11. Access Microbiology
  12. JMM Case Reports
  13. Physical Review Letters
  14. 50+ Annual Reviews titles
  15. 15+ American Society of Microbiology journal titles (beginning in 2025)
  16. Biochemical Journal (beginning in 2025)
  17. BioOne society titles (over 200, beginning in 2026)

There are other journals which have recently become OA titles, and the Library does not yet have an OA agreement with. One reason why we may not have an OA agreement with a publisher is because commercial publishers are often seeking a much larger sum than we now pay in subscription costs than the Library can afford to pay. These are titles you may have published in recently without any cost, but now you will need to pay an OA charge in order to publish your article. Below are a list of recent shift-to-open access titles:

  • International Journal of Wildland Fire, CSIRO
  • ISME Journal, Nature
  • Microbial Ecology, Springer
  • Biogeochemistry, Springer
  • EMBO Journal and EMBO Reports
  • FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Oxford
  • FEMS Microbiology Reviews, Oxford
  • ICES Journal of Marine Science, Oxford
  • American Journal of Science

International Open Access Week

International Open Access Week FlyerInternational Open Access Week is a global event held annually https://www.openaccessweek.org/.  Libraries hold events recognizing the progress accomplished and yet to accomplish in making scholarly publishing a more fair and equitable process than it now is. A senior scientist often has a tremendous advantage in being able to better afford paying an open access processing charge than an early career researcher does. This disparity scales up globally such that OA charges leave important science from other parts of the world left to be published in local publications without the broad dissemination more popular publications are able to offer. Diamond Open Access is the global movement which seeks to embed payment of OA publishing costs within funding organizations, universities, and governmental bodies, thus leaving these payments as elements apart from the researcher authors (who shouldn’t need to concern themselves with paying OA charges!) There are ongoing discussions between academic institutions and publishers and many other concerned parties which attempt to collectively reorder publishing into a more fair process than it now is. This link will allow you to see a list of freely accessible open access events globally over the next month: https://www.openaccessweek.org/events

If you have any questions about this please contact ejournals@mbl.edu or stop by the Library office: Lillie 2nd floor or Data Library and Archives, MacLean building.

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