Publishing and Copyright

How We Can Help

The Open Knowledge Center (OKC) monitors developments in scholarly communication, and we are happy to share our expertise. OKC staff can:

• Consult on all forms of scholarly sharing, including practices like posting pre-prints online
• Discuss new and non-traditional forms of publication
• Review author publication contracts for journals and books
• Advise on licensing research products, including data, software, digital projects, and written materials
• Recommend a repository or platform for sharing research works
• Offer guidance on measuring the impact and articulating the value of your scholarly works
• Share information on navigating claims of infringement under the Copyright Claims Board

Our subject specialists can also provide discipline-specific advice to help you:

• Match research to relevant journals or publishers
• Determine a journal's impact and influence in a research area
• Meet funder mandates for public access to your data and publications
• Find appropriate repositories for sharing the data associated with your publications

Author's Rights and Open Access

Protect your right to use your own work

The OKC provides expertise that can help you negotiate the legal and policy issues surrounding your publication decisions.

• We recommend the Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine as a tool to personalize a publication agreement addendum.
• The SPARC Author Addendum can be added to any contract to retain specific rights.
• You can also schedule a consultation to review your publication agreement and consider specific language to address your goals as an author.

Publish open access

Many authors choose to make their work freely available to read online by making it "open access" (OA).

• The Libraries participates in several agreements with publishers that allow campus authors to publish their articles open access without having to pay article processing charges (APCs). (We are unable to offer financial support for individual APCs outside of these agreements.)
• We encourage, advocate for, and advise on many methods for making research artifacts openly accessible online without the need to pay anyone. Examples of this include pre-prints, our institutional repository, and including open publishing costs in funding proposals.
• We maintain expertise on a suite of open research tools that can inform other kinds of “open interventions” in your research workflow.Many authors choose to make their work available online by making it "open access" (OA). Scholarly consensus has developed that publications that are made openly available online contribute to a readership and citation advantage.

Open access journals at NC State

Scholar-led and academy-owned platforms like Open Journal Systems allow the research community to establish and control the production and dissemination of research and scholarship.

Several research units on campus publish their own open access journals:

• BioResources
• Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures
• Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management
• Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies

The Open Knowledge Center is available to advise on best practices for open access journal publishing and management, including author contracts, indexing, licensing options, platform choice, editorial/technical workflows, and more.