John Wiley and Sons, Inc. and OhioLINK, a library consortium serving 118 libraries and 89 Ohio colleges and universities, announced today the signing of a Wiley Open Access Account agreement. A Wiley Open Access Account will enable OhioLINK-affiliated researchers to use a central fund for Article Publication Charges (APC). The partnership reflects both parties’ growing commitment to open research and advancing scholarly communications. OhioLINK is the first North American library consortium to centrally fund the creation and dissemination of open access research.
Piloting the implementation of a Wiley Open Access Account across the consortium will allow OhioLINK and its members to investigate the consortial challenges of the transformation of the publication and management of open access research. Members will collectively determine the criteria and mechanisms for assigning the funds.
Judy Verses, Wiley’s Executive Vice President of Research, commented: “We’ve had a long-standing and strong relationship with OhioLINK, and their team has continually proven to be global pioneers in academia. It is only through collaborative partnerships that we, as a community, are able to push our industry forward and test new waters. We share a fundamental belief with OhioLINK that researchers have to be at the center of what we do.”
Gwen Evans, Executive Director of OhioLINK, added: “Our members are deeply committed to open research and publications, but these transformative agreements will have different implications for different types of consortia.” Evans recently published an article detailing the contrasting considerations required of “read” consortia versus “publish” consortia. “As a ‘read’ consortium, this agreement with Wiley will allow our members to begin investigating the complexity of this funding model for open access at scale. This experiment will allow our membership to explore the intricacies of open access and its impact on consortia like ourselves.”
The Chair of OhioLINK’s Library Advisory Council, Carolin Sterling of Central State University Library, embraced the initiative: “As a membership organization with a long history of cooperation and collaborative action, we look forward to the opportunities that this will give us to assess open access support as a diverse group of institutions.” Xuemao Wang, University of Cincinnati Dean of Libraries and past chair of the Library Advisory Coordinating Committee, also expressed support. “The experimental Wiley open access initiative will not only create learning experiences for the OhioLINK community in navigating consortium-based open access operational complexity, but is also a significant step forward to cultivate an open mind set for the greater potential of the coming bold open movement.”
Damon E. Jaggars, Vice Provost and Director of University Libraries at The Ohio State University, added his endorsement: “Increasing the global reach of scholarship produced by Ohio State researchers is a strategic priority for the university and its libraries. This initiative with Wiley is a first step in building our understanding of how a consortium like OhioLINK might play a significant role in increasing access to important scholarship by opening content for worldwide use in research, teaching, and learning,” Jaggars said.
The Wiley Open Access Account includes an online dashboard for account management and administration providing an easy to use and transparent view of publishing activity with reporting functionality. The recently launched consortia dashboard enables complete oversight of payment requests through the consortia funder account; allowing a consortium to manage payment requests from authors for their open access APCs. The tool adds speed to the backend process which results in the speed of research dissemination.
OhioLINK-affiliated researchers will have access to Wiley Open Access and central funds environment beginning in the Fall of 2019.
