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Public Access Toolkit: Publishing

The public access toolkit provides guidance to researchers who receive funding from U.S. federal agencies and must comply with public access mandates.

Caution about Questionable Publishers & Journals

Sometimes, publishers or journals will reach out to you to publish with them. If the opportunity sounds too good to be true, it likely is. When in doubt, use the Think--> Check--> Submit! Checklist.

For more information visit: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/oa/journals 

Nelson OSTP Memo Publishing Requirements

The updated memo: 

  • Requires ALL federal agencies to comply. 
  • Eliminates the 12-month embargo period. 
  • Requires the underlying data to be made openly available in machine-readable formats. 

Further reading: 

Publishing Open Access

Publishing Open Access is one way to meet the Public Access requirements. In essence, Open Access refers to removing price and permission barriers to peer reviewed research. There are two ways to publish open access: by choosing an OA venue ((e.g. journal) or by sharing your work in a repository. 

If you are not publishing in an OA venue, you can share your research in a repository. Virginia Tech's institutional repository, VTechWorks, is available to all VT researchers. 

In addition, all Virginia Tech authors can deposit their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM)* of their published article (journal articles and book chapters) immediately upon acceptance to VTechWorks for all articles published after July 1, 2021 under the Virginia Tech Open Access Policy. 

*The AAM is the version that has undergone revisions after peer review; looks like a basic Word document; does not have the final editorial changes, typesetting, formatting & styling, and publisher branding that the publisher's PDF has. Here is an example of an AAM.

However, depositing to VTechWorks may not necessarily comply with Public Access mandates, depending on the agency and their requirements. It is mentioned here so that authors are aware of the Virginia Tech Open Access Policy, so that they can make more of their work openly available.