As access to digital resources, especially Open Access (OA) journal content, is critical during times such as these when researchers and institutions all over the world are connecting remotely, there continues to be a need for the timeliest and highest quality research. As such, IGI Global recently announced that they have converted 30 journals to full Gold OA starting in January 2021, to better support the academic and research communities all over the world. View the full list of IGI Global’s Gold OA Journals here, and the press release about this transition can be viewed here.
As IGI Global is a full member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the above journal(s) will continue to be published under our high-quality publishing process, which includes a rigorous, double-blind peer review procedure. Our goal is to transition the 30 full Gold OA journals to where IGI Global publishes articles immediately online (after the peer review and formal acceptance) with no restrictions or delays, as the journal will be fully and solely published in digital format (e-journal). This enables high-impact research to become immediately available to librarians, patrons, and the entire scientific research community.
Additionally, we are working diligently to integrate and deliver all full Gold OA journals into major OA repositories, including DOAJ. This will enable libraries to easily integrate these resources into their discovery systems, while providing the entire research community with access to content in their areas of interest, as well as support developing countries in utilizing high-quality research that is traditionally locked behind paywalls.
As many are already aware, there are many costs associated with quality and ethical journal publishing, including:
- Digital tools used to support the manuscript management and rigorous double-blind peer-review processes;
- Typesetting, formatting, and layout;
- Online hosting;
- Journal abstracting services;
- Third-party software;
- Editorial support;
- Metadata distribution;
- And more.
Under the traditional subscription-based journal publishing model, these costs are covered by the revenue generated from journal subscriptions. Under the Gold OA model, the above costs are covered by article processing charges (APCs), as the journal articles are published under a CC BY license (where the authors maintain the copyright and others can distribute, adapt, and build upon the work without limitations).
As we transition these journals to Gold OA, we currently have many article submissions undergoing the peer review process that had been originally submitted under the traditional subscription-based model and at the time there was no APC fee associated with the publication of the article. We realize that it would be unfair to expect the authors of these article submissions to pay an APC fee following the completion of the peer review process if their work is accepted, and as such IGI Global will be waiving and subsidizing the APCs for the vast majority of article submissions that fall within these circumstances. This is in addition to our ongoing commitment to waiving and subsidizing APCs for those with accepted articles hailing from developing nations. With this in mind, we kindly ask for support in helping us transition this set of journals to full Gold OA by asking those who currently have subscriptions to these journals in transition to maintain their current subscription to the above journal(s). During this transition, these subscription(s) are of the utmost importance, as we understand IGI Global is newly established in publishing Gold OA journals and we are working toward becoming a leader and generous contributor in OA publishing. Therefore, in the infancy of this transition, our initial garnered APCs will likely not fully cover the costs of publishing these resources as we work to become more established in Gold OA journal publishing.
These subscription costs will:
- Enable us to keep these journals completely Gold OA and ensure continued access to the journal.
- Openly provide the latest research that undergoes a rigorous peer review process, which is supported by IGI Global’s full membership to the international Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
- Provide a sustainable, long-term solution to cover the costs of publishing, producing, hosting, and integrating the journals into the necessary platforms without having to request high APCs from authors.
- Empower institutions to support OA publishing independently of funding support.
- Support us in providing valuable research to academics, libraries, and institutions around the world through various outlets and directories, including DOAJ, PubMed, and others that can be easily integrated into your library discovery system.
- Support OA research mandates, such as cOAlition S (Plan S).
Hopefully within the next year or two (2021-2022), we will be able to establish more sustainable sources of OA funding for these journals and the need for this subscription support will decrease as a result. Additionally, over the next five years, IGI Global is planning to transition all of its 175+ journals into Gold OA to ensure that all published research in these scholarly and scientific journals is widely accessible to researchers all over the world and that, under Gold OA, IGI Global’s authors’ contributions are widely recognized, garner a high citation impact, and continue relevant discourse in their respective areas of research.
During this transitional phase, and as we establish data feeds with OA repositories, including DOAJ, we would like to provide the research community with the links for direct access to the journals listed above as part of IGI Global InfoSci-Open (a collection containing all of IGI Global’s OA content), which can be included in library discovery systems.
Additionally, and as you may already know, this movement to Gold OA is essential on the larger scale and will enable IGI Global to continually provide sustainable solutions to OA for our library customers, as well as our authors. One of our most notable sustainable OA solutions to date has been IGI Global's OA Fee Waiver (Read and Publish) Initiative, which was introduced in early 2018. Under this initiative, when a library invests in IGI Global’s InfoSci-Databases (including the InfoSci-Books and InfoSci-Journals databases), IGI Global will match the investment with a fund of equal value to go toward providing 100% OA APC subsidies for their patrons when publishing their work under open access in an IGI Global journal. This initiative has inspired other Read and Publish models that are widely utilized today. We are continually looking to build on the foundation of sustainable OA, and through our collaborative efforts we can work to fundamentally shift the accessibility of high-quality research. Learn more about this initiative in the 2018 Charleston Conference Neopolitan Session below:
We will be providing updates throughout this journey to showcase how this Subscribe to Open model is supporting our transition into full Gold OA. Additionally, be sure to access and, for libraries, integrate these journals into your discovery systems, along with all of IGI Global’s OA content, which can be found through InfoSci-Open.
For questions regarding this model, IGI Global’s full Gold OA journals, invoicing/subscription details, or for institutions interested in maintaining their current subscription, please contact IGI Global’s Customer Service Team at cust@igi-global.com or 717-533-8845 x100.
About IGI Global: Founded in 1988, IGI Global, an international academic publisher, is committed to producing the highest quality research (as an active full member of the Committee on Publication Ethics “COPE”) and ensuring the timely dissemination of innovative research findings through an expeditious and technologically advanced publishing processes. Through their commitment to supporting the research community ahead of profitability, and taking a chance on virtually untapped topic coverage, IGI Global has been able to collaborate with over 100,000+ researchers from some of the most prominent research institutions around the world to publish the most emerging, peer-reviewed research across 350+ topics in 11 subject areas including business, computer science, education, engineering, social sciences, and more. To learn more about IGI Global, click here.
Newsroom Contact
Caroline Campbell
Assistant Director of Marketing and Sales
ccampbell@igi-global.com
(717) 533-8845, ext. 144
www.igi-global.com/