Tag Archives: scholarly publishing

New Opportunity to Publish Open Access in Springer Nature Journals

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. 

Opening Educational Resources for Behavioral Health Practitioners: An Interview with Sean E. Snyder

Happy Open Education Week! During this week, we celebrate and advocate for open educational resources. Open educational resources (also called OER) are defined by SPARC as “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, which also carry legal permission for open use.” These teaching and learning materials — like videos, slide decks, podcasts, worksheets, and textbooks — are free to access, use, share, and modify in the digital environment without copyright concerns because their creators have given others permission to do so.  

Why are open educational resources so important? For students, their biggest appeal is they are zero or low cost. Open textbooks can save students hundreds of dollars each semester. For faculty, OER offer an opportunity to craft course materials that are highly relevant, current, and meaningful for their discipline. In addition to remixing and modifying existing materials, faculty can create new materials or textbooks. 

Temple University Libraries and University Press’s joint imprint North Broad Press provides Temple faculty with an opportunity to author their own open textbook. All North Broad Press titles are peer reviewed and freely available online. Check out a list of 15 open textbooks in progress.  

To learn more about why Temple faculty are driven to author an open textbook, we spoke with Sean E. Snyder, MSW, LCSW. Sean is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has taught courses on child emotional challenges at Temple University and Thomas Jefferson University and has lectured at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s the author a new open textbook, A Developmental Systems Guide for Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Practitioners, which provides clinicians with actionable evidence-based practices for the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of child and adolescent mental and behavioral health.   

Why did you choose to write A Developmental Systems Guide for Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Practitioners as an open textbook? 

I put myself in the shoes of a student first – how could a class text be helpful and useful to them as they learn to be a therapist or counselor? My thoughts were – it needs to be in very actionable terms and it needs to be available to them when they are done with the course. The hope was that students could come back to the book in their practice – and not be turned away by a paywall. 

Going beyond Temple University, we all know there is a crisis of mental healthcare service capacity in the United States. The hope with this textbook was to make what we know from the science and lived experience of how to best support the mental health of children free and easily accessible. It’s putting trustworthy information out in the meta-verse and anchoring some of the core concepts of mental healthcare for children. In the book, Dr. Bruce Chorpita calls this “therapeutic intelligence:”  

Therapeutic intelligence refers to the idea that at any given moment, if you knew everything in those 1200 randomized trials, what would you do at any given moment with a child, whether you were a therapist, or whether you were a teacher, or a bus driver, or a soccer coach or anyone else who comes into contact with children? How would you behave in a way that fosters the psychological development, the emotional intelligence, the health and wellness of that child?

An open access textbook is at least a small drop in the bucket towards that vision of therapeutic intelligence in our society.  

Your book features many contributing authors and voices. Tell us about this collaborative process and why it was important for this project. 

Democratization of knowledge is fundamental to education, learning, and culture, among other things. That means folks can access the knowledge we create but also have access to creating that knowledge base. Coproduction of knowledge requires dialogue of different voices – the partnership that this book required was my favorite part of the process. I got to interact with so many brilliant people from all walks of life, and they all pushed my ongoing learning and personal growth. I am so appreciative of everyone involved in this process. 

It was important when reaching out to coauthors that I had the value of access in mind – what voices have been marginalized in academia, how can this book create access in that space for them? How could being a coauthor on this book potentially contribute to their professional paths? The book has so many diverse voices across different aspects of identity- race, ethnicity, primary language, sexual/gender identity and expression, first-gen college student. Again, the best part of this book was working together. 

Tell us about the process of publishing this textbook with North Broad Press, the joint open access imprint of the Libraries and Temple University Press. 

The process was very collaborative with the folks at North Broad Press (NBP) – we set expectations at the beginning, then they let me “do my thing.” They were supportive of any changes I made to the format or other aspects of the book. I was happy to have two great peer reviewers look at the book as well, especially during a period where getting peer reviewers was hard!  Overall, the NBP team made the process feel easy. 

You chose a Creative Commons license for your textbook. Were you familiar with Creative Commons prior to this project? 

I was familiar with this kind of license because of my exposure to folks working in the “open science” space. The process of selecting a license was new to me – there is some nuance that can allow varying degrees of how someone can use, remix, and adapt. The NBP team walked me through the process and helped me ensure that the license supported the overall aim of increasing access and dissemination of the content.  

What advice would you offer faculty who might be considering authoring an open textbook?   

The process reminded me a lot of doing a research protocol – set up your SOP and make sure your protocol is set to keep you anchored during the writing process, especially if you have coauthors. Instead of updating an IRB to any changes you want to make to the protocol, you update the publishing team on the changes you hope to make. Give yourself a long enough time horizon to write and revise, knowing that literature can update over the course of writing the book.  And of course, let your passion come to life. A book allows you so much space to let that happen. 

Thank you, Sean! 

If you feel inspired to create an OER, Temple Libraries can support you! 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, contact Mary Rose Muccie (maryrose.muccie@temple.edu) and Alicia Pucci (alicia.pucci@temple.edu) for more information.   

New Open Textbook: Economics for Life

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.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Open Textbook Publishing: An Interview with Dr. Carmelo A. Galati

Image by Tom 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 SPARC as “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, which also carry legal permission for open use.” These are teaching and learning materials — like videos, slide decks, podcasts, worksheets, and textbooks — that are free to access, use, share, and modify in the digital environment without copyright concerns because their creators have given others permission to do so. 

Why are open educational resources so important? For students, their biggest appeal is they are zero or low cost. Open textbooks can save students hundreds of dollars each semester. For faculty, OER offer an opportunity to craft course materials that are highly relevant, current, and meaningful for their discipline. In addition to remixing and modifying existing materials, faculty can create new materials or textbooks. 

North Broad Press logo

Temple University Libraries and University Press’s joint imprint North Broad Press provides Temple faculty with an opportunity to author their own open textbook. All North Broad Press titles are peer reviewed and freely available online. Check out a list of 17 open textbooks in progress

To learn more about why Temple faculty are driven to author an open textbook, we spoke with Dr. Carmelo A. Galati, Associate Professor of Instruction and the Co-Director of the Italian Studies Program at Temple University. Dr. Galati is the author a new open textbook, Gratis!: A Flipped-Classroom and Active Learning Approach to Italian, which is currently under review with North Broad Press. This textbook is intended for students with no previous knowledge of Italian.  

Why did you choose to write Gratis!: A Flipped-Classroom and Active Learning Approach to Italian as an open textbook?  

While leading a session on active learning for teachers of Italian at a professional workshop under the jurisdiction of the General Consulate of Italy in Philadelphia and the Italian Ministry of Education (October 2019), my colleague, Dr. Cristina Gragnani, and I discovered university students are not the only ones affected by the high and growing cost of language textbooks. High school programs are also facing issues and are unable to provide students with affordable educational tools to promote the Italian language and culture. Temple University’s Italian Studies program’s work within the Philadelphia community to disseminate Italian culture dates to the early 20th century. In support of that pioneering work educating students and promoting Italian culture, we created an open-access, introductory-level Italian textbook for Temple University students, as well as high school students in the greater Philadelphia area and beyond. Doing so makes foreign language study accessible to all and places Temple University at the forefront of internationalization at the secondary education and university levels. 

Tell us about the process of publishing this textbook with North Broad Press, the joint open access imprint of the Libraries and Temple University Press. 

Prior to Gratis! I did not have experience in textbook publications, as most of my writing projects dealt with peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes. Thanks to the guidance of Annie Johnson (former Assistant Director for Open Publishing Initiatives and Scholarly Communications), Mary Rose Muccie (Director, Temple University Press), and Alicia Pucci (Scholarly Communications Associate), the process has been a positive and rewarding experience. From the very first day of being contracted to author Gratis! everyone at North Broad Press has been very supportive and has shown great enthusiasm for the project. Whenever questions arose regarding copyright, formatting, use of videos, or anything in between, they were quick to respond by email and to schedule video conferences with me should I need further clarification.  

You chose a Creative Commons license for your textbook. Were you familiar with Creative Commons prior to this project?  

I was not familiar with Creative Commons (CC) prior to the project. As a language textbook, Gratis! is filled with lots of images to introduce, reinforce understanding of, and assess vocabulary knowledge of each lesson and unit. Creative Commons has made the inclusion of images much less stressful since I did not need to purchase individual licenses for the book’s photographs. Furthermore, in choosing a CC license for Gratis!, instructors who wish to adopt it are free to add more material. This may include new integrated grammar or vocabulary exercises that align with the context of each chapter. The CC license allows instructors to choose cultural reading materials to assess reading comprehension as well, since educators can write and add additional reading content to the book.  

You received an OER Development Grant from the PA GOAL program. Did this impact how you envision faculty and students using this textbook?   

The OER Development Grant supported the development of videos, images, and interactive H5P exercises that serve as ancillary materials and provide students with instant feedback. The grant provided funding for four undergraduate Italian majors (Aidan Giordano, Andrew Raker, Julia Rudy and Eileen Scanlan), studying at our Temple University Rome campus, working with two Italian faculty members and the Director of Student Activities (Daniela Curioso, Bruno Montefusco, and Gianni Marangio, respectively), to create original video content for each of the textbook’s chapters. The students’ contributions allow language learners to experience studying abroad virtually through videos that document their travels around Rome, provide a virtual campus tour of Villa Caproni (the building which houses the Temple Rome campus along the banks of the Tiber River), and record interviews with local Italian university students discussing differences between the American and Italian Educational system.  

Thanks to the OER Development Grant, Gratis! emulates the leading publishers in providing students with competencies that they will acquire by the completion of each chapter. Units include specific vocabulary that integrates grammar and culture lessons, while online ancillary materials provide students with additional support and instant feedback. 

All the unique videos, images, and H5P exercises that appear in Gratis! can be found in TUScholarShare’s Teaching and Learning Materials collection for download and reuse.    

What advice would you offer faculty who might be considering authoring an open textbook?  

If you are looking for a way to provide affordable educational tools for students and the opportunity to continuously reflect on and update best practices and initiatives to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, then authoring an open textbook is the way to go! Most Italian language textbooks contain microaggressions that endorse heteronormative culture and behaviors, promote traditional family planning, and ultimately present a false picture of the world in which we live. In writing Gratis! I have been able to represent diverse realities for Italian-language learners and to make the learning process inclusive to all! Gratis! does not promote stereotypes of traditionally conservative Italians. Instead, it teaches inclusive vocabulary regarding the LGBTQIA+ community. It presents students with language regarding places of worship for all faiths, not just Roman Catholicism. In its goal to represent Italy’s diverse realities, Gratis! depicts Italians of all cultures, races, and religions. 

Thank you, Dr. Galati! 

If you feel inspired to create an OER, Temple Libraries can support you! 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, contact Mary Rose Muccie (maryrose.muccie@temple.edu) and Alicia Pucci (alicia.pucci@temple.edu) for more information. 

New Graduate Student Ambassador

The Libraries recently launched the Center for Scholarly Communication & Open Publishing (SCOP). SCOP’s initiatives and events support open publishing across the Temple community and provide opportunities for faculty and students to come together to discuss and shape the future of scholarly communication. SCOP’s core initiatives include TUScholarShare, Temple’s institutional repository; North Broad Press, our joint Libraries/Press imprint; the open journal publishing program; and the Open Access Publishing Fund.

We’re pleased to announce that Julia Scheffler is SCOP’s first Graduate Student Ambassador. Scheffler specifically supports the institutional repository, TUScholarShare. We spoke with Scheffler to learn more about her background and her work for the Libraries.

What brought you to Temple?
I grew up just under two hours away in Kutztown, PA and have frequently visited Philadelphia. My mentor from undergrad is a graduate of Klein College, and after researching the faculty here it felt like the perfect fit for me. I initially planned to come to Temple for my undergraduate study, but I just wrapped up my first semester of the Media Studies & Production Master’s program! I took a few years off of school after receiving my B.A., but was eager to return to academia and connect with the faculty here at Temple to fully utilize all of the resources this campus has to offer. 

What do you hope to do after you graduate?
I hope to pursue my PhD in Communication and Media Studies while also working in the creative media industry. My current research focuses on the discursive use of memes and aesthetics online to establish digital communities and political subcultures. Ideally I would like to connect my passion for research and writing with my creative outlets of art, music, and fashion. I am still in the process of honing in on a specific area within the broad field of communication and media.

Can you tell us a little bit about your work at the Libraries?
Working at Temple Libraries really opened my eyes to the vast amounts of research coming from Temple across all disciplines. I really enjoy browsing the abstracts of articles from departments that I do not regularly interact with in my own studies. Most of my time with TUScholarShare is spent reviewing research done by current and former faculty, validating and organizing metadata for our institutional repository, and confirming copyright status for published works.

What has surprised you the most about this work?
I was surprised to learn so much about the multitude of Creative Commons licenses an author may have for their work, and how researchers go through the publication process. I don’t have much experience working with copyright, so it has been interesting to learn about author’s rights in regards to distribution of their own work. It has also shown me how many layers of review articles must go through before we are able to access them as students.

What has TUScholarShare taught you about scholarly publishing?
I have learned the value of open access publishing for both students and authors alike. Without the institutional access provided by Temple, a majority of these published works are behind paywalls that limit the public’s access to that research. 

If there’s one thing you could tell faculty and graduate students about TUScholarShare, what would it be?
I would strongly encourage other graduate students to utilize TUScholarShare for their own independent research and assignments! We are really fortunate to have renowned faculty that have been published many times, and it is a great way to dive deeper into a research area you may have connected with a professor on. Also, it never hurts to cite your own professor in your writing. I would also encourage faculty, especially those that may be new to Temple, to connect with us and have their publications deposited to our repository. This is an accessible way to share your work with the Temple community and share your experience with the students here.

Thank you Julia!

2019-2020 Recipients of the OA Publishing Fund

open sign

“A sign of our times” by clickit07 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

We are pleased to announce the 2019-2020 recipients of the Open Access Publishing Fund. Congrats to all!

William Aaronson and Hamlet Gasoyan (College of Public Health, Health Services Administration and Policy). “School-Based Preventive Dental Program in Rural Communities of the Republic of Armenia.”

Ashish Bains, Linda Vien, and Ho-Man Yeung (Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine). “Primary Extranodal Jejunal Diffuse Large B cell Lymphoma as a Diagnostic Challenge for Intractable Emesis: A Case Report and Review of Literature.”

Sarah Bass and Mohammed Alhaji (College of Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences). “Cyberbullying, mental health, and violence in adolescents and associations with sex and race: Data from the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.”

Marion Chan, Xiaofeng Yang, Hong Wang, Fatma Saaoud, and Yu Sun (Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology). “The Microbial Metabolite Trimethylamine N-Oxide Links Vascular Dysfunctions and the Autoimmune Disease Rheumatoid Arthritis.”

Eunice Chen and Susan Murphy (College of Liberal Arts, Psychology). “Examining Adolescence as a Sensitive Period for High-Fat, High-Sugar Diet Exposure: A Systematic Review of the Animal Literature.”

Amy Freestone and Katherine Papacostas (College of Science and Technology, Biology). “Multi-trophic native and non-native prey naiveté shape marine invasion success.”

Victor Hugo Gutierrez, Daniel Wiese, Ananias A. Escalante, Heather Murphy, and Kevin A. Henry (College of Liberal Arts, Environmental Studies). “Integrating environmental and neighborhood factors in MaxEnt modeling to predict species distributions: a case study of Aedes albopictus in southeastern Pennsylvania.”

Christine Jones, Alexis Los, Richard Tyrell, and Scott Golarz (Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Surgery). “Reducing Wound Hemorrhage: Use of Bilayer Collagen Matrix in Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia.”

Jeremy Mennis and Xavier Nogueira (College of Liberal Arts, Environmental Studies). “The Effect of Historic Paving Materials on Traffic Speed.”

David Smith, Tommy H. Ng, and Lauren Alloy (College of Liberal Arts, Psychology). “Meta-analysis of Reward Processing in Major Depressive Disorder Reveals Distinct Abnormalities within the Reward Circuit.”

John Sorrentino and Donald Wargo (College of Liberal Arts, Economics). “Residential Land Use Change in the Wissahickon Creek Watershed: Profitability and Sustainability?”

Roy Stevens and Hongming Zhang (Kornberg School of Dentistry). “The Prevalence and Impact of Lysogeny Among Oral Isolates of Enterococcus faecalis

Won Suh and Weili Ma (College of Engineering, Bioengineering). “A Novel Cell Penetrating Peptide for the Differentiation of Human Neural Stem Cells.”

Interested in applying for the OA Publishing Fund? The 2020-2021 application can be found here.

2020 Call for Proposals: Temple-Faculty Authored Open Textbooks

North Broad Press is excited to launch our spring 2020 call for open textbook proposals. We’re looking for faculty members to author or edit open textbooks in their fields of study. All Temple University faculty are eligible to apply. Faculty whose proposals are selected will receive a stipend of $5,000.

The application is available here. The deadline for proposals is April 3, 2020. All applicants will be notified by April 24, 2020.

About us
North Broad Press is a joint publishing project between Temple University Press and Temple University Libraries. We publish works of scholarship, both new and reissued, from the Temple University community. Examples include open textbooks written, edited, or compiled by Temple faculty; previously out-of-print books written by Temple faculty or published by the Press; and born digital projects produced by Temple faculty or staff.

Check out our latest open textbook: Structural Analysis by Felix Udoeyo.

What is an open textbook?
An open textbook is a textbook licensed under a Creative Commons license and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers, and members of the public. Print-on-demand copies are also made available at cost. Open textbooks save students money and improve learning outcomes by ensuring that all students have access to their textbook on the first day of class.

What does the work involve?
As author, the faculty member is responsible for writing the text, finding and/or creating suitable images and figures, and clearing any necessary permissions. As editor, the faculty member is responsible for finding contributors, ensuring content requirements and deadlines are met, communicating feedback, and writing an introduction for the volume. Faculty members will keep the copyright to their book and will be able to choose the Creative Commons license that best suits the project.

Will this be peer reviewed?
Yes! All North Broad Press projects go through the peer review process to ensure the accuracy, effectiveness, and appropriateness of the text.

Have questions about your proposal or would like to discuss it before submitting? Please contact Mary Rose Muccie and Alicia Pucci.

Why Temple Researchers Publish OA

promotional banner for open access week

This week is Open Access Week, a yearly international celebration that aims to increase awareness about open access (scholarship that is free to read and reuse). Most academic work is locked up behind a paywall, available only to those who are affiliated with a college or university. Many Temple faculty members and graduate students choose to publish in open access journals in order to make their work more widely available to readers around the world.

The Libraries support open access publishing by Temple researchers through our Open Access Publishing Fund. When faculty and graduate students apply for the fund, we ask them why they have chosen to publish open access. Here are a few of the responses we have received this year:

“I prefer to publish open access because it increases accessibility and visibility. With an open access publication, I can be confident that my lab’s work will be accessible to everyone, free of charge and without having to wait for an embargo period.”
-David Smith, Assistant Professor, Psychology

“The open access nature of the journal is well-suited to our article, which addresses traffic calming via the use of non-asphalt materials for paving road surfaces, making streets safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorized vehicles. Such paving materials are more common in the developing world, which was noted by one of the article reviewers. Publishing in an open access journal enhances access to the article by scholars in developing countries, where access to more conventional academic journals may be restricted due to cost or other barriers.”
-Jeremy Mennis, Professor, Environmental Studies

“This research is about the ecology of invasive species, which are an increasingly urgent problem that affect natural systems across the globe. It is important to make this research accessible to the scientific community and other non-academic stakeholders who are studying or affected by invasive species.”
-Amy Freestone, Associate Professor, Biology

“It is good to publish in an open-access journal because this format allows broader sharing of our studies. In addition, being digital, online article is published faster than the traditional journal article that takes over 4-6 months for printing an issue. Being open access, everyone worldwide can read our article without having to afford a costly subscription.”
-Marion Chan, Associate Professor, Lewis Katz School of Medicine

“The study aims to assess the relative importance of both environmental and socioeconomic neighborhood factors in the prediction of A. albopictus’ (one of the main transmitters of Zika virus) presence in Southeast Pennsylvania using MaxEnt (open source software) machine-learning algorithm. The study uses exclusively free available data and software to provide knowledge about the main drivers and current distribution of a vector species in South East Pennsylvania. This knowledge is relevant not only for academia but for others professionals working or interested on mosquito prevention planning such as public health officials. The free availability of this publication will provide access for these stakeholders to information that otherwise would be restricted for general use. We believe that publication in an open access journal will boost the impact of the article within and beyond academia.”
-Daniel Wiese, PhD student, Geography and Urban Studies

“The paper presents a school-based preventive dental program in the Republic of Armenia, as well as its results and recommendations to local stakeholders. In this middle-income country, most of the universities and public institutions do not have institutional access to mainstream academic journals. Publishing open access will allow readers in Armenia and in other low-income settings to get access to this paper and possibly replicate the intervention and its results.”
-Hamlet Gasoyan, PhD student, College of Public Health

2019-2020 OA Publishing Fund

**Please note: as of 10/30/19 the OA Publishing Fund has been exhausted for the 2019-2020 year. We will have more funds beginning on July 1, 2020.**

We are excited to announce that the Libraries will continue our Open Access Publishing Fund in 2019-2020. The fund is open to all current Temple faculty members. Current postdoctoral fellows, residents, and graduate students may also apply, as long as there is at least one faculty member listed as a co-author on the article.

Authors with a journal article that has been accepted or is under consideration by an open access publisher are encouraged to apply. Authors simply fill out a brief application with their information, a copy of the article, and a copy of the journal acceptance letter (if available). Funds will be available on a first come, first served basis. The Libraries will aim to make a final decision regarding the application within two weeks’ time. If the request is approved, Libraries will transfer funds to authors’ research fund or departmental account. The Libraries cannot reimburse authors or pay publishers directly.

Applicant Eligibility

  • Applicants must be a current Temple University faculty member OR a current postdoctoral fellow/resident/graduate student with a faculty member listed as a co-author.
  • Applicants with external grant funding that could cover, either in whole or in part, the cost of any publication and processing fees are ineligible.
  • Applicants must agree to deposit a copy of their publication in our Digital Library, or any future library repository.

Publication Eligibility

  • The publication must take the form of a peer-reviewed journal article.
  • Many subscription journals now offer an open access option in which authors can choose to pay a fee to make their article open access. These publications are sometimes called “hybrid” open access journals. Articles in “hybrid” journals are not supported.
  • The journal must be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
  • The publisher must be a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), or clearly follow the membership criteria of the organization.
  • Because the Libraries already cover 50% of the APC for BioMed Central journals, these journals are not eligible.

Additional Limitations

  • Each applicant may request up to $1,500 total per fiscal year. This amount may be split across multiple applications so long as funds are available.
  • For articles with multiple Temple authors, the per article payment is capped at $3,000.
  • Funding will cover publication and processing fees only. Funds may not be used for reprints, color illustration fees, non-open access page charges, permissions fees, web hosting for self-archiving, or other expenses not directly related to open access fees.
  • For applicants who have not yet submitted for publication, requests will be conditionally approved awaiting official acceptance by the publisher. All conditional approvals will expire six months after notification. Applicants must provide a copy of the acceptance letter before the invoice is processed.
  • Fees are pro-rated for multi-authored articles. Co-authors from outside of Temple are not supported. If an article includes non-Temple authors, the APC will be divided equally among all authors and then the Temple authors’ portion will be funded. For example, if the APC is $2000, and there are four authors, two of whom are from Temple, the authors can apply for $1000 from the fund ($500 each).

Attribution Requirement

  • Authors who receive support must include the following statement in their acknowledgements: Publication of this article was funded in part by the Temple University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund.

Download a copy of the application form here.

Questions? Contact Mary Rose Muccie (maryrose.muccie@temple.edu) or Annie Johnson (annie.johnson@temple.edu).

Note: The image above, “Open Access Publishing Fund,” is a derivative of “Open Access at CC” by Amy Collier for Creative Commons, and is used under CC BY 4.0. “Open Access Publishing Fund” is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Annie Johnson.

2018-2019 Recipients of the OA Publishing Fund

picture of open arrow sign

“Open”by “Caveman Chuck” Coker is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

We are pleased to announce the 2018-2019 recipients of the Open Access Publishing Fund. Congrats to all!

Jocelyn Behm, Brianna DiMarco, Christian Irian, Kelley Langhans, Kathleen McGrath, Tyler J. Tran and Matthew Helmus (College of Science and Technology, Biology). “First records of the mourning gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris Duméril and Bibron, 1836), common house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus in Duméril, 1836), and Tokay gecko (Gekko gecko Linnaeus, 1758) on Curaçao, Dutch Antilles, and remarks on their Caribbean distributions.”

Megan Heere, Beth Moughan, Stephen Aronoff, Joseph Alfonsi, and Jennifer Rodriguez (Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Clinical Pediatrics). “Effect of Education and Cardboard Bassinet Distribution on Newborn Bed-Sharing.”

Albert Kim (College of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering). “An Implantable Ultrasonically-Powered Micro-Light-Source (µLight) for Photodynamic Therapy.”

Ravi Kudesia (Fox School of Business, Human Resource Management). “Does interacting with trustworthy people enhance mindfulness? An experience sampling study of mindfulness in everyday situations.”

Peter Marshall and Ashley R. Drew (College of Liberal Arts, Psychology). “Interpersonal Influences on Body Representations in the Infant Brain.”

Peter Marshall, Nathan J. Smyk, and Staci Meredith Weiss (College of Liberal Arts, Psychology). “Sensorimotor Oscillations during a Reciprocal Touch Paradigm with a Human or Robot Partner.”

Peter Marshall and Staci Meredith Weiss (College of Liberal Arts, Psychology). “Neural Measures of Anticipatory Bodily Attention in Children: Relations with Executive Function.”

Charles Munyon (Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Neurosurgery). “Neuroethics of Non-primary Brain Computer Interface: Focus on Potential Military Applications.”

Heather Murphy and Shannon McGinnis (College of Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics). “Bacterial Contamination on Latrine Surfaces in Community and Household Latrines in Kathmandu, Nepal.”

Gillian Queisser (College of Science and Technology, Mathematics). “Spine-to-Dendrite Calcium Modeling Discloses Relevance for Precise Positioning of Ryanodine-Receptor-Containing Spine Endoplasmic Reticulum.”

Saqib Rehman, Katharine D. Harper, Courtney Quinn, Joshua Eccles, and Frederick Ramsey (Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine). “Administration of Intravenous Antibiotics in Patients with Open Fractures is Dependent on Emergency Room Triaging.”

Soomin Seo (Klein College of Media and Communication, Journalism, Media, & Communication). Special Issue: Talking With the ‘Hermit Regime’: North Korea, Media, and Communication, International Journal of Communication. Not yet published.

Sylvia Twersky (College of Public Health, Health Services Administration and Policy). “Restrictive State Laws Aimed at Immigrants: Effects on Enrollment in Food Stamp Program by U.S. Citizen Children in Immigrant Families.” 

Geoffrey Wright (College of Public Health, Physical Therapy). “Tonic neuromuscular processing affects postural adaptation differently in aging and Parkinson’s Disease.” 

Xiaoxing Xi, L. Kasaei, T. Melbourne, Ke Chen, and B.A. Davidson (College of Science and Technology, Physics). “MgB2 Josephson junctions produced by focused helium ion beam irradiation.”