Compact for OA Publishing Equity - News - University of Pittsburgh Joins COPE

The University of Pittsburgh has joined 16 other leading research institutions as a signatory to the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE).  Participation in COPE is the university’s latest move in support of Open Access to scholarly research.  Through this program, the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh (ULS) seeks to encourage a new business model to cover the cost of publishing research results in Open Access journals without cost barriers to the global research community.  The program will subsidize fees charged to eligible Pitt authors to publish in most Open Access journals.  Details on the program can be found at http://oscp.library.pitt.edu/author-fees-fund/. Open Access journals now number over 8,000, and most provide all the guarantees of academic quality controlled through rigorous peer review of content.  At the same time, Open Access journals benefit from wider distribution and discoverability of their content by eliminating the barriers of cost and limited access associated with traditional subscription-based journals.  The ULS’s longstanding commitment to Open Access encompasses a significant publishing program including 33 peer-reviewed e-journals; six subject-based repositories; D‑Scholarship@Pitt, the Open Access repository for the University’s scholarly output; and training, outreach, and advocacy programs to support Open Access. 'The ULS is strongly committed to open access publishing, both as a publisher and host for open access journals and as a consumer of information.  The traditional subscription-based model for academic publishing characterized by escalating costs and the growing commercialization of knowledge runs counter to academic culture and tradition.  We believe that new knowledge should be shared widely in a manner that is as unfettered as possible.  By joining the growing movement to assist our faculty to publish in true Open Access platforms, we are simply following our commitment to a logical next phase,' said Rush Miller, Hillman University Librarian and Director of the ULS.