SAGE Announces a Pilot Open Access Publishing Program with UNC Chapel Hill University Libraries

From a SAGE News Release:

SAGE Publishing today announces an open access pilot program with the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Beginning in 2020, the program will grant UNC-Chapel Hill access to SAGE Journals and provide funding to cover article publishing fees (APCs) for University researchers to make their SAGE research articles fully open access.

Under the agreement, SAGE and the University Libraries will offer APC funding to UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, staff, and students for a number of articles accepted for publication in a SAGE subscription journal under an open access option. For articles that derive from funded research, the APC will be charged at a discounted rate. Furthermore, library patrons will receive full access to all journal content in the ‘SAGE Premier All Access’ journal collection, which includes more than 1,000 peer-reviewed journals published on behalf of over 500 scholarly and professional societies.

“UNC-Chapel Hill is a public research university committed to advancing knowledge and bettering the human condition. Promoting open access is core to our values,” said Elaine Westbrooks, Vice Provost for University Libraries and University Librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill. “This agreement makes it easier for UNC-Chapel Hill researchers to share the amazing work that happens here with a worldwide audience, and it is part of the University Libraries’ strategy to forge new channels for making published research more open and accessible.”

SAGE and the librarians at UNC-Chapel Hill conceived the program out of a shared desire to help researchers find and disseminate the world’s best scholarship and in response to an increase in open access funder requirements.

“This partnership involves effort that is key to who SAGE is – enabling research openness, supporting the library’s role in the scholarly process, and empowering social and behavioral scientists who do not traditionally receive the level of funding that might cover APCs,” commented David Ross, Vice President of Open Research at SAGE. “SAGE is committed to paving new paths as we pursue the goal of disseminating vital research to the broadest community in a way that maximizes output while minimizing the cost to the research community. We look forward to learning from this pilot in order to better assess how we can support the growth of open access in the U.S. for the future.”

SAGE was an early driver of open access publishing as a founding board member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association; one of two publishing partners in the European Commission-funded FP7 Framework project, the Study of Open Access Publishing; and launching SAGE Open, the first broad-spectrum open access journal aimed specifically at the Social and Behavioral Sciences. SAGE today publishes more than 200 fully gold open access journals.

Learn More: Interview: Vice Provost for University Libraries and University Librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill

Learn More: Interview: David Ross, Vice President of Open Research at SAGE

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