Open access publishing at ECU
ECU Libraries celebrate a new open access publishing opportunity for East Carolina University researchers with an agreement between Carolina Consortium and Wiley Research Publishing. ECU is a member of Carolina Consortium, established in 2004 and aimed at saving money on a variety of resources and services for libraries in North and South Carolina.
At the forefront of this agreement, announced earlier in January, is shared benefits from the open access model. Participating institutions’ subscription fees have been adjusted to cover publication charges for their researchers. As a participating institution, ECU’s faculty, staff and students have access to Wiley’s subscription journals, and our researchers can have their peer-reviewed, accepted articles published open access in all of Wiley’s 1,400 hybrid journals without direct cost to themselves.
Open access to peer-reviewed articles means they may be read, shared and re-used immediately.
“The speed with which articles become available through open access is a game-changer,” said Burrell Montz, an associate editor for Journal of Flood Risk Management and professor in ECU’s Department of Geography, Planning and Environment. “Important studies are readily available for other scholars, fostering the timely dissemination of research results. This has benefits for authors because their work is easily accessed for citation and for other researchers who can build on previous studies while the information is particularly relevant.”
Seventeen articles were accepted as open access during the first three weeks of the three-year agreement between Wiley and Carolina Consortium.
Wiley’s internal research confirms articles published open access consistently receive larger readership, a higher number of citations and higher altmetric scores than subscription access-only articles.
“Open access publishing allows scholars to bring high-quality research from the lab to your laptop,” said Liz Ferguson, senior vice president at Wiley, in a news release by the publishing company. “We’re excited to enter this agreement with the Carolina Consortium to bring more research to more people in the United States and globally.”
ECU Libraries have established agreements with multiple publishers and provide funding to support open access publishing. One article by a group of ECU co-authors, “Effect of a parent agreement on return rates of Vanderbilt assessments and treatment adherence in pediatric attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder patients,” was published open access through the read and publish agreement with Cambridge University Press.
Click here for more on access to all transformative agreements, institutional memberships and funding for open access publishing.
Carolina Consortium this year includes 176 public libraries, seminary schools, community colleges, public universities and private institutions of higher learning.
Visit Wiley author services or contact Joseph Thomas, assistant director for research and scholarly communication, at thomasw@ecu.edu for more on the benefits for researchers from this agreement.