The Leddy Library negotiated its first open access agreement with a journal publisher four years ago.
Since then, seven more agreements have been signed, and as of Jan. 1, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Company of Biologists have joined the ranks. Articles accepted in most of their journals will have the publishing fee fully covered, while a smaller set of journals will offer a partial discount.
The moves towards open access increases the visibility of research, attracting more citations and expanding its reach, says Roger Reka, a collections librarian at the Leddy Library.
"The academic library community has long recognized that there is already enough money in the scholarly publishing system it's just unevenly distributed," he says. "By redirecting the traditional read-only subscription funds toward read-and-publish agreements, we can make more research freely available without increasing costs."
Most research funding agencies require open access publication. While there are many paths such as depositing the accepted manuscript into the University's institutional research repository for free publishing the final version as open access often comes with steep fees for authors, mitigated by agreements with publishers.
The Leddy Library collaborates with partner university libraries to negotiate these agreements through the Canadian Research Knowledge Network and the Ontario Council of University Libraries. By leveraging collective purchasing power, libraries have made these agreements cost-neutral while maximizing open access publishing benefits for authors.
The library has read-and-publish agreements with Cambridge University Press, Company of Biologists, De Gruyter, Elsevier, Institute of Physics, Oxford University Press, SAGE, and Wiley. In 2024 alone, these agreements covered more than $430,000 in publishing fees, removing financial barriers for researchers who choose open access and freeing up funds for other research needs.
To learn more, visit the library's open access website for a full list of covered journals and for more information on open access.
