Research

Open access refers to scholarly research and learning resources that are freely available without many or all of the usual copyright or licensing restrictions. The open movement encourages the unrestricted sharing of research and learning resources with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of learning, culture, science and society. We are here to help faculty, staff, and students both contribute to and benefit from all things open. If you have questions about Open Access, feel free to contact Cara Bradley or Christina Winter.

The University of Regina Library supports open access publishing by providing:

Author fees, also known as Article Processing Charges (APCs), are a fee charged to authors by some academic journals or publishers to cover the costs associated with the publication of an article. The library has negotiated the following discounts on APCs as part of our license fees:

1. American Chemical Society (ACS)
   University of Regina researchers are eligible for a $250 USD discount off the APC price. This discount will be automatically applied once a researcher selects their institutional affiliation as part of the submission process. Once an invoice is paid, ACS is unable to offer refunds. Please apply applicable discounts before paying.
2. Canadian Science Publishing

   As of January 1, 2023, corresponding authors affiliated with CRKN participating members will be able to publish an unlimited number of articles as open access in the following five journals at no charge for the duration of the agreement January 01, 2023 to December 31, 2025:
   1. Biochemistry and Cell Biology
   2. Canadian Journal of Physics
   3. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
   4. Genome
   5. Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering

   Upon article submission to CSP using ScholarOne, authors will provide their institutional affiliation to determine eligibility and the APC is waived automatically for accepted papers in each of the five journals.

   Canadian Science Publishing continues to offer a 25% APC discount for URegina-affiliated authors for all other journals not included in the open access pilot

3. Elsevier

   A new three-year, read-and-publish agreement with Elsevier (January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2026).
   Corresponding authors who are affiliated with the University of Regina will benefit from unlimited open access publishing in more than 1,800 Elsevier Hybrid journals with no Article Processing Charge (APC), including in 165 Core Hybrid Specialty titles that are new to the CRKN agreement. Additionally, as a measure to ensure the ongoing eligibility of journals, any titles that convert from Hybrid to Fully Gold OA within the term of the agreement will remain eligible for the full APC waiver.
   Corresponding Authors affiliated with the University of Regina  are also eligible to receive a 20% discount on the article processing charge (APC) for most Elsevier Gold Open Access journals.
   Several journals are excluded from the APC waiver, such as Cell Press, Lancet, and some other society owned journals.
   The list of titles included in this agreement.
   Authors must indicate their institutional affiliation upon submitting their manuscript in order to benefit from the waiver/discount. Please review the author workflow.

4. Journal of agriculture, food systems, and community development.
   The University of Regina Library is a shareholding library in this publication, which means there is no fee for our researchers to publish open access in this journal-- a savings of US$500.
5. Institute of Physics (IOP)
   University of Regina researchers are able to publish at no cost an unlimited number of their articles as open access in most IOP hybrid and gold journals for the duration of the agreement (2022-2024).
6. Oxford University Press Journals

   The University Library is participating in the CRKN Oxford University Press "Read and Publish" agreement. URegina corresponding authors of articles accepted in all hybrid journals are eligible for APC-free publishing. Authors must declare their affiliation with URegina at article submission. A full list of participating and excluded titles and details about the author workflow is available on the CRKN website. The automatic submission process started February 1, 2024 and any articles submitted in January will be reviewed retroactively.

7. Royal Society of Chemistry
   University of Regina researchers are eligible for 15% discount on the article processing charge (APC) for all RSC hybrid journals. The APC discount is applied upon acceptance of manuscript. Authors must indicate their institutional affiliation upon submitting their manuscript in order to benefit from the discount.
8. SAGE Journals
   University of Regina authors, including graduate students, are eligible free or discounted publication in SAGE journals. Authors affiliated with the 69 participating CRKN institutions may publish their articles as open access with no Article Processing Charge (APC) in over 900 SAGE Choice journals (some exclusions apply).  Those publishing in SAGE's gold open access journals are eligible for a 40% discount on APCs. This discount will be applied automatically via the SAGE Open Access Portal (SOAP) when corresponding authors identify their affiliation to the University of Regina. For more information about this process, visit the CRKN-Negotiated APC Discounts webpage. Where an author is eligible for more than one discount for gold journals, discounts cannot be combined but the highest discount available to the author will be applied to the APC.
9. Taylor & Francis
   University of Regina researchers receive a 25% discount in T&F Open Select journals. To take advantage of the discount on T&F Open Select journals, an author can submit an article and choose the open access publishing option. When the APC is generated, authors can select their institution from the drop-down menu, and the discount will be automatically applied. The author can select a Creative Commons license to sign once they accept the quote.

10. Wiley-Blackwell

    University of Regina researchers are eligible for APC-free publishing in all Wiley hybrid journals during the term of the 2023-2024 agreement. Publishing Rights begin on January 15, 2023, in order to permit Wiley sufficient time to create and customize institutional accounts. Click here to see the title list of participating hybrid journals

    Articles accepted for publication in Wiley’s gold journals are not eligible under this agreement. Authors will continue to be charged APCs for accepted articles in these journals.

As part of our ongoing commitment to the democratization of knowledge through Open Access, the University of Regina Librarians’ and Archivists’ Council (LAC) issued a new policy which came into effect March 1st, 2022.

Our original Open Access Resolution was published in 2011 and focused on publishing in Open Access journals, and making those publications available in oURspace. Since then, the Open landscape has expanded to include Open Research, Open Scholarship, Open Educational Resources, and Open Publishing; accordingly, our new policy is intended to reflect this growth and reaffirm our commitment to the principles of Open. 

We hope that our new policy will encourage the campus community to join our librarians and archivists in making their work available through publishing articles in Open Access journals, making research data available in Open Data Repositories, and depositing their publications in our Open Access institutional repository, oURspace.

Additional support for Open Access is provided through our financial support for these Open Access initiatives:

1. The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS), through which the University of Regina Library provides financial support for the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), SHERPA/RoMEO, a directory of publisher copyright and self-archiving policies and Redalyc/AmeliCA, an open access journal index and article hosting platform for scholarly Open Access journals published in 31 countries, including Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
2. Coalition Publi.ca, a strategic partnership created by Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project, which is dedicated to the advancement of research dissemination and digital publishing in the social sciences and humanities in Canada and abroad. As members of CRKN (the Canadian Research Knowledge Network), the University of Regina Library supports this work to create a framework for a new relationship between journals and libraries, and helps to provide financial support to Canadian journals during the transition to a fully open access model.  Starting in 2018, CRKN members have committed to a five year partnership that involves over 125 journals, 40 of which are currently open access.
3. SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access in Particle Physics Publishing), the largest scale global open access initiative ever built, involving an international collaboration of over one thousand libraries, library consortia and research organizations. SCOAP³ enjoys the support of funding agencies and has been established in co-operation with leading publishers. Eleven publishers of high quality international journals are participating in SCOAP³. Elsevier, Institute of Physics, and Springer, together with their publishing partners, have been working with the network of SCOAP³ national contact points. Reductions in subscription fees for thousands of participating libraries worldwide have been arranged, making funds available for libraries to support SCOAP³. As CRKN members, the University of Regina Library fully participates in this international initiative, supporting the project through redirection of subscription fees.
4. Canadiana Open Access Heritage Collection Project, a 10-year initiative (begun in 2013) to digitize the most significant Canadian archival fonds previously available only in micro-formats, and to endow this corpus with carefully compiled, robust metadata. The collection was created with funding from CRKN (including the University of Regina Library) and the collaboration of Library and Archives Canada and is informed by an academic advisory group.
5. MIT Press Direct to Open Ebooks
   is a collective action model built to support open access publication of digital monographs from MIT Press. Through the support of libraries and consortia worldwide, digital monographs will become openly accessible each year without book processing charges (BPCs).