Criss Library Support for Open Access

International Open Access Week (Oct. 20-26) offers the opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

Open access is reshaping scholarly publishing by making peer-reviewed research free for anyone to read—without paywalls. Traditionally, authors (often using grant funding) conduct research, write an article, and submit it to a journal. After peer review—resulting in acceptance, revisions, or rejection—the journal publishes the article. At that point, readers (usually libraries) pay subscription fees to access the content.

Open access changes the model at the end of the cycle: articles are free to read online, broadening reach and impact.

How Open Access Works

• Gold Open Access. The final published version is immediately free to read on the journal site. An article processing charge (APC) is typically paid by the author, funder, or institution. Because APCs can be significant, Criss Library encourages authors to include APCs in grant budgets when possible.

• Diamond/Platinum Open Access. Journals are free to read and free to publish in—no APCs—because they’re supported by institutions, societies, or other sponsors. An example is UNO’s Journal of Religion and Film and other journals hosted in DigitalCommons@UNO.

• Green Open Access (self-archiving). Authors deposit a version of their article—often the accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript—in a repository such as DigitalCommons@UNO, making it freely accessible in parallel with the journal.

How Criss Library Supports UNO Authors

• DigitalCommons@UNO. Our institutional repository hosts diamond open-access journals and provides a home for post-prints (accepted manuscripts) that are freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

• Open-access publishing agreements.Through agreements negotiated by Criss Library and, in some cases, partners such as the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) and Lyrasis, UNO authors can publish open access in participating journals at reduced or no cost, while the library also receives reading access to content.

Use Our Open-Access Publishing Agreements

Criss Library currently offers nine open-access publishing agreements. To qualify, the UNO author must be the corresponding author, use a UNO email address, and identify University of Nebraska at Omaha as the affiliation so publishers can recognize eligibility. Current partners include:

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

• American Chemical Society (ACS)

• Biochemical Society (via Portland Press)

• Cambridge University Press

• Elsevier

• IOP Publishing (Institute of Physics)

• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)

• Springer Nature

• Wiley

Each agreement has its own workflow, eligible titles, and limits. For details—and the latest additions—see the library’s Open Access Research Guide. You can also contact Jennie Tobler-Gaston, Criss Library's Institutional Repository Coordinator, for help depositing your work or navigating an agreement.

About Criss Library

The Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library fulfills the UNO mission through dynamic services, highly qualified and adaptive personnel, unique and extensive collections, and accessible learning spaces and environments. With its location on UNO’s Dodge Campus, Criss Library provides UNO students, faculty and staff, and the Omaha community with the resources and materials needed to excel academically and professionally.