Open Access Publishing Support

What Is Read and Publish?

Read and Publish, also known as a transformative agreement, is an open access (OA) model that bundles payment for reading access and payment for publishing into a single contract.

The Texas Medical Center Library participates in several Read and Publish agreements which aim to serve authors and the wider community by publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed OA content. These agreements waive or discount publishing fees for authors who wish to publish in open access journals.

Common terms in open access publishing:

• Gold:  Publisher provides free online access to the article in the OA journal, usually with an Article Processing Charge (APC). 
• Hybrid:  An article processing charge is paid for an individual journal article to be made open access in a subscription journal.

• Open Access option: Includes OA journals and the author's choice of publishing their work open or closed.
• Copyright:  Most agreements require that the author retain copyright control, and publish with a CC BY Creative Commons License (or the most flexible sharing license permitted by the researcher's funding requirements).
• Transparency: Terms of the agreement are typically made available to the public
• Article processing charges (APCs):  Paid partially or in full by the institution, rather than the author.
• Subscribe to Open (S2O):  a funding model that allows a publisher to convert journals to OA one year at a time, without charging costs to authors. 

Benefits for authors:

• Take advantage of an institutional agreement that covers your open access publishing fee or provides a discount.
• Publish under a Creative Commons license to determine how readers can use your article.
• Publish in an eligible hybrid journal and choose the option to make your article fully open.
• Retain copyright control over your content.
• Increase visibility for your research, leading to higher citations, wider reach and global impact.
• Encourage a shift away from paid subscriptions that place published research articles behind paywalls.
• Fulfill research grant requirements which may require the publication of research in an open-access journal.

The library proactively supports Read and Publish and other APC discount agreements with publishers when the agreement is financially viable and provides the faculty with comprehensive open publishing options.

The library does not currently fund article processing charges (APCs) but encourages our academic institutions to take advantage of these APC discounts.

The library will continue to evaluate future Read and Publish agreement options from our publishers as they become available.

Special thanks to Matt Young of University of Texas at Dallas for use of his original libguide.