Each year, the third week of October is designated as International Open Access Week. At HSLS, a few ways we support open access year-round include:
Support researchers required to comply with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy.
If your manuscript meets the criteria of the policy, a postprint must be deposited into PubMed Central (PMC) within 12 months of publication, allowing open and free access to all.
Note the NIH recently released a Draft Public Access Policy (implementing the PDF: 2022 OSTP Memorandum) which would update the current policy and require all federally funded publications to be made immediately available. The comment period on the draft recently closed. A final plan is expected “no later than December 31, 2024, with an effective date no later than December 31, 2025.” In the meantime, continue to comply with the current policy and look for further communications from NIH and HSLS as updates are available.
Provide group instruction sessions, one-on-one consultations, and asynchronous learning modules on open access topics.
Of particular note is the Open Scholarship and Research Impact Challenge, six self-paced Canvas modules, developed in partnership with the University Library System. The modules can be completed in any order, and you can pick and choose just the ones that interest you the most. For each completed module, you can earn a badge to share on social media and/or LinkedIn.
Have signed agreements with several publishers to enable eligible authors to publish open access, either at no charge or at a discounted article processing charge (APC).
These agreements cover corresponding authors who are currently enrolled as students or employed at the University of Pittsburgh. Many of these agreements are also available to current UPMC employees and students. While eligible article types may vary by publisher and journal, normally only original research, review articles, and case studies are eligible. For specific details and included journals see the below links.
Detailed information about publishers’ terms and eligibility
Search for journal titles with free or discounted APCs
Q1* journals that would be covered by our agreements include:
- JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging (Elsevier)
- Chest (Elsevier)
- Translational Research (Elsevier)
- Intensive and Critical Care Nursing (Elsevier)
- Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (Elsevier)
- Psychological Medicine (Cambridge)
- Wearable Technologies (Cambridge)
- Nutrition Research Reviews (Cambridge)
- Expert Reviews in Molecular Medicine (Cambridge)
- Arthritis Care & Research (Wiley)
- PM&R (Wiley)
- Clinical & Experimental Ophthalmology (Wiley)
- Journal of Clinical Periodontology (Wiley)
*Journal Impact Factor (JIF) Quartile: A journal’s quartile ranking is determined by comparing a journal to others in its Journal Citation Reports category based on Impact Factor score. If a journal falls in Q1, it means that the journal performs better than at least 75% of journals in that category, based on its Impact Factor score.
Please contact us with any questions or concerns regarding how to make your research outputs open. During the week of October 21-27, keep your eyes on our social media accounts for some shout-outs to those in the Pitt health sciences community who are embracing open (Instagram, X, Facebook).
~Melissa Ratajeski