Open Scholarship & Scholarly Publishing

Open scholarship shifts the costs of producing scholarly outputs (articles, books, data sets, code, protocols, etc.) and supporting infrastructure (hardware, indexing, metadata, operating systems, software, unique identifiers, etc.) from the reader/user to the author/researcher, charitable organization, academic institution, government or some combination of these. Historically, a user would access traditional scholarly outputs (articles, books, journals) by paying for a membership, subscription or purchase, or they would gain access as an authorized user of an academic institution, public library or organization that pays for access on their behalf. At the foundation of the open access movement is the evolution of digital scholarship which has created opportunities for sharing a more complete representation of research outputs without financial barriers for accessing them. The "user pays" model now has alternatives that do not put the burden of payment for access on the reader/user.

The means of paying for open scholarship are constantly evolving. These are some funding models in current use:

The UMass Amherst Libraries have been providing financial support for open scholarship content, infrastructure and advocacy organizations for two decades. These investments are guided by our Framework for Provider Agreements. If you have questions about how to benefit from these agreements, or you would like to suggest new ones, please contact us.

CONTENT

INFRASTRUCTURE

ADVOCACY

The UMass Amherst Libraries' Framework for Provider Agreements guides how the Libraries invest in content and infrastructure based on a set of principles that favor open scholarship, authors' rights and broad participation in the production of and use of scholarship. The Libraries collaborate with campus scholars to distribute their works.