Open Publishing Program

UBC Library’s Open Publishing Program is an open access journal and text service to help UBC faculty, researchers, instructors, students, and staff develop open access publications for scholarship and instruction.

In alignment with UBC Library’s Strategic Framework to advance research, learning, and scholarship, the service aims to advance open scholarship by providing the supports needed to make UBC information resources openly available.

For additional information on open access funding and discounts, go to Funding to Support Open Access Publishing and Open Access Publisher Discounts.

Our Open Publishing Program is free of charge and will provide the following services to support openly accessible publications at UBC:

Consultation on workflows and planning for publications
Electronic hosting for journals and texts
Technical training and support in Open Journal Systems (OJS) and Pressbooks publishing platforms
Support in sharing published resources through UBC Library’s institutional repository, cIRcle
ISSN, ISBN and/or E-ISSN application
Persistent unique identifier assignment (e.g.DOI)
Consultation on indexing and discovery
Consultation on copyright-related topics (e.g. author agreement and journal copyright policy)
Digital preservation

Partner Expectations

The publishing partner(s) is responsible for:

The editorial process (e.g. content solicitation, the peer review process, copyright management, copy editing, design, reference management, etc.)
Marketing and promotional activities
The copyright management of the publication, and represents and warrants that the material uploaded to the OJS or Pressbooks system is original or licensed under an open copyright license that allows for reuse and adaption.

Eligibility

The proposed publication must meet the following criteria:

At the time of the request, the editor-in-chief (or equivalent role) of the publication is a current UBC faculty member, researcher, instructor, staff member, or student.
The publication must have a vetted process for content selection to ensure quality, such as a peer review or similar process.
UBC Library asks for the non-exclusive rights to reproduce, translate (to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation without changing the content), and/or distribute content worldwide in electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. These rights do not include the right to sell the content or sell access to the content.
Where the publication is student-led or contains content developed as a part of course work, authors retain the copyright of their work.

Journals

The publication must have a sustainability plan to show the continuation of the publication in the future.
The publication must have a clear copyright policy that outlines to the reading public and authors under what terms journal content is controlled and disseminated. While the Library advocates for open access to journal content, alternative models of dissemination will not be grounds for ineligibility.
The publication must have an editorial board or conference committee, as appropriate.
For more information, refer to the Library’s OJS Hosting Terms of Service Agreement.

Books

The publication must be openly licensed using a Creative Commons license or equivalent.
For more information, refer to the BCcampus Terms and Conditions.

Submit a Proposal

We look forward to assisting you with your publishing project.

Please contact us for a consultation at: scholarly.communications@ubc.ca

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