Category Archives: Publishing

New Opportunity to Publish Open Access in Springer Nature Journals

Open access, Publishing,

Guest post by Rebecca Lloyd, Subject Librarian of History, Latin American Studies, Portuguese, and Spanish

Temple University Libraries has signed a three-year agreement (2024-2026) with journal publisher Springer Nature that allows Temple-affiliated corresponding authors to publish open access articles at no cost in over 2,000 of their hybrid journals (i.e., subscription journals that offer authors the option to pay a fee to make their article open access). This agreement comes through Temple Libraries’ membership in the NERL consortium.

Publishing open access allows anyone to read these scholarly works immediately upon publication, free of charge. This new agreement builds on Temple Libraries’ ongoing efforts to support open access publishing, making impactful research readily accessible to scholars worldwide. Making these papers openly accessible also benefits the authors by amplifying the reach of their work.   

“This Springer agreement represents yet another step in our long-term commitment to investing library resources in a diverse ecosystem for open scholarship and open access,” says Joe Lucia, Dean of Libraries. “Transformative agreements that provide faculty authors a clear path toward open access publishing help to broaden awareness of this important transition in publishing and create opportunities for institutions like Temple to evaluate the best paths towards a fully open scholarly publishing environment.” 

How does the Springer Nature transformative agreement work?  

After an article is accepted for publication by a hybrid Springer Nature journal, Temple authors will: 

  • Receive an invitation from Springer Nature to complete the publication process 
  • Identify your affiliation with Temple University (faculty, student, or staff) as author (must be the corresponding author) and use your Temple University email address 
  • Receive confirmation that your article can be published open access without any charge (i.e., no article processing charge (APC)) through the NERL agreement 
  • Elect to publish your article open access, if desired 

Further details:  

  • There may be a limit to the number of Springer Nature articles Temple authors can publish open access each calendar year without paying an APC. This opportunity, therefore, will be first come, first served. 
  • Eligible article types: Original Paper, Review Paper, Brief Paper, or Continuing Education 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Transformative Agreement (TA)?

An agreement with a publisher in which APC charges are covered by the library for affiliated scholars who publish open access in that publisher’s journals. The agreement also includes subscription access to the publisher’s journal content.   

What is an Article Processing Charge (APC)?

A fee authors must pay to publish an open access article in some journals. 

What additional support does Temple Libraries offer to support open access publishing? 

Temple Libraries has current transformative agreements with two other publishers to cover or discount the cost of publishing open access journal articles. We have an agreement with Cambridge University Press that waives the APC for eight Temple-authored open access CUP journal articles per calendar year. We also have an agreement with BioMed Central to cover 50% of the APC for Temple authors who publish in any of BMC’s open access journals. 

Eligible Temple authors can also apply for the Libraries’ Open Access Publishing Fund, which covers up to 50% of the APC for those who would like to publish in an open access journal. Note that articles cannot be in a hybrid open access journal. 

Contact Alicia Pucci, Assistant Director of Scholarly Communications, at alicia.pucci@temple.edu or your subject librarian with any questions about publishing open access with library support. 

New Open Textbook: Economics for Life

Publishing, Temple University Press, , , ,

North Broad Press, the joint Temple University Libraries and Press imprint, has published its fourth open textbook! Economics for Life: Real-World Financial Literacy, by Dr. Donald T. Wargo, is now available open access on the Press’s Manifold platform and on the Press website.

Wargo, Associate Professor of Instruction in the Economics department at Temple University, has for several years taught an undergraduate course on financial literacy as part of Temple’s general education program. In the process of planning for and teaching his course, Wargo realized that not only did his students lack an understanding of financial decision making—including credit card use, making large purchases such as a car or home, and retirement planning. Opportunities for guidance on these major decisions were limited.

Wargo found that the available textbooks on the subject lacked the breadth and depth he believed was necessary to prepare students for the numerous decisions they would be facing, This, coupled with the high cost of the commercial textbook he had been using, led him to submit a proposal for an original open access textbook to North Broad Press. As he noted in his proposal, “Economics for Life: Real-World Financial Literacy is designed to help soon-to-be college graduates emerge into the start of their ‘real lives’ with better comprehension of how to analyze the financial decisions that they will soon have to make.”

With chapters on creating and living within a budget, evaluating and managing debt, and the fundamentals of investing, Economics for Life’s approachable style and accessible content make it an ideal book for anyone looking for practical guidance. Readers will learn how to use financial data to make informed personal finance decisions. The book’s Manifold site also includes a supplemental resource—an article by Wargo on the explanation and impact of the “pandemic recession,” defined as mid-February to mid-April 2020.

About the author

Dr. Donald T. Wargo is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Economics department at Temple University. His specializations are in Real Estate, Behavioral Economics and Neuroeconomics. Prior to his teaching career, he held executive positions in several large real estate companies in the Philadelphia area, including Vice President of Finance and President. For fifteen of those years, he ran his own development company, Wargo Properties, Inc.

About North Broad Press

North Broad Press publishes peer-reviewed open textbooks by Temple faculty and staff. It operates under the following core principles:

  • We believe that the Libraries and the Press are critical resources for publishing expertise on campus.
  • We believe that the unfettered flow of ideas, scholarship and knowledge is necessary to support learning, clinical practice, and research, and to stimulate creativity and the intellectual enterprise.
  • We support Temple faculty, students, and staff by making their work available to audiences around the world via open access publishing.
  • We believe that the scholarly ecosystem works best when creators retain their copyrights.
  • We believe in experimentation and innovation in academic publishing.
  • We work to decrease the cost of higher education and improve learning outcomes for students by publishing high quality open textbooks and other open educational resources.
  • We believe in the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and promote these values through our publications.
  • We commit to making our publications accessible to all who need to use them.
  • We believe place matters. Our publications reflect Temple University and the North Philadelphia community of which we are a part.

Building Bridges Toward Open Textbooks

Publishing, ,
Neon sign that says 'Open'
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Happy Open Education Week! During this week, we celebrate and advocate for open educational resources. Open educational resources (also called OER) are defined by the Hewlett Foundation as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.” In a nutshell, these are learning materials — like videos, slide decks, podcasts, worksheets, and even textbooks — that are free to access, use, share, and modify in the digital environment without copyright headaches because their creators have given others permission to do so.

Why are open educational resources so important that they are celebrated for an entire week? Their biggest appeal — for students — is they are zero or low-cost! Open textbooks especially can save students hundreds of dollars each semester. For faculty, OER is an opportunity to craft course materials that are highly relevant, current, and meaningful to their discipline. While faculty can remix and modify existing materials, there is also an opportunity for faculty to create new materials or textbooks!

North Broad Press logo

At Temple University Libraries and University Press, we’re lucky to have the North Broad Press imprint. All North Broad Press titles are scholarly works that are peer reviewed and freely available online. View a list of open textbooks in progress, and consider applying to their call for proposals for faculty-authored textbooks, which comes with a stipend of $5,000.

Cover of Bridges open textbookTo learn a little more about why Temple faculty are driven to author an open textbook, we sat down with Shawn Higgins, Academic Coordinator of the Undergraduate Bridge Program at Temple University’s Japan Campus. Shawn is the author of the brand new open textbook, Bridges: United States Academia for First-Generation and International College Students (Temple UP, 2021). This textbook was written for first generation students and English language learners to help them navigate life at United States colleges and universities.

Higgins headshotWe encourage you to listen to this 27-minute interview to learn why Shawn authored this textbook, what it was like to work with North Broad Press, and why open educational resources and open textbooks are so important to Shawn as a faculty member.

 

Listen to the entire interview or jump to a section that interests you!

  • Why write Bridges as an open textbook  [1:40]
  • Process of producing this textbook with Temple’s North Broad Press [5:58]
  • Discussion of remix elements found in the textbook [10:27]
  • Familiarity with Creative Commons prior to this project [12:12]
  • How the metaphor in the textbook’s title relates to open textbooks/open educational resources [14:14]
  • How faculty and students can use this textbook [18:34]
  • Advice to faculty who might be considering authoring an open textbook [23:40]

If you feel inspired after listening to this interview, please know that you have support here at Temple Libraries! For more information about OER, visit our Discovering Open Educational Resources guide. Contact your subject librarian if you want help locating and implementing OER in your courses. If you’re interested in writing your own open textbook, respond to the call for North Broad Press book proposals.

Don’t forget to check out Shawn’s textbook. You can read the book on your browser or device or download the book in PDF and EPUB formats. Share your thoughts about this book on social media with the hashtag: #bridgestextbook.