Three years after establishing a groundbreaking open-access pilot project, a new agreement between the University Libraries at UNC-Chapel Hill and SAGE Publishing is expanding free open access publishing for Carolina researchers.
The new agreement, which became effective in January, covers open access publishing charges in all SAGE Choice and SAGE Gold Open Access journals. The corresponding author must be a UNC-Chapel Hill affiliate. There are no caps on the number of articles that will be funded each year.
“We’re excited to work with SAGE and extend the benefits of open access publishing to more members of the Carolina community,” said Nerea Llamas, associate University librarian for collection strategies and services. “These efforts bring greater visibility to the outstanding research and researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill.”
During the three-year pilot that ran from January 2020 through December 2022, Carolina affiliates published approximately 340 open access articles with SAGE.
The expanded partnership is part of the University Libraries’ Sustainable Scholarship initiative. The initiative seeks to make published research more affordable, sustainable, transparent, and open. Llamas said that open access agreements with SAGE and other publishers are part of a long-term strategy to combat the high cost of scholarly journals.
As part of the Sustainable Scholarship program, the University Libraries maintains an open access publishing agreement with the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and concluded a pilot partnership with Frontiers in 2022. The University Libraries also operates the Carolina Digital Repository as a way for UNC-Chapel Hill researchers to preserve and open their research.
Carolina researchers who would like to learn more can visit the Library’s FAQ about the SAGE Publishing agreement or send email to OAPublishing@unc.edu.
