Open access publishing support
The Libraries supports OA publishing, initiatives, and infrastructure in the following ways:
- we provide funds for OA articles and monographs
- we sign agreements with publishers that pay for free or discounted OA publishing
- we support OA infrastructure and initiatives around the world
Funds from MIT Libraries
Open access publishing fund
The MIT Libraries’ OA fund give MIT researchers up to $1,000 towards publication fees in peer-reviewed, open access journals.
We also support MIT authors who want to publish their monographs open access.
Publisher OA agreements & discounts
AIP Publishing
MIT Libraries signed a three-year agreement (to December 2025) with AIP Publishing for MIT corresponding authors. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible, and articles must be published open access in a hybrid journal. The agreement includes 50, 51, 53 OA articles for each of the three years.
Workflow for corresponding authors in journals from AIP Publishing: When you submit an article, choose MIT as the institution name; then choose the option that says, “I wish to publish Open Access as part of an Institutional agreement.” This option should show MIT as having an agreement with AIP to support OA publishing. More information on the AIP site. Guide for authors on the AIP site (pdf)
Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu
American Chemical Society
MIT Libraries subscribe to “ACS All Publications,” which means ACS members who are currently affiliated with MIT get a $250-$750 discount on ACS “AuthorChoice.” AuthorChoice makes the final published version of articles open access immediately or after 12 months. More information
Association for Computing Machinery
The MIT Libraries has an open access agreement with ACM that allows MIT authors to make ACM articles freely available at no cost to them. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible.
Under the agreement, ACM will also automatically deposit the manuscripts of all MIT co-authored articles into MIT’s institutional repository, DSpace. And the agreement includes rights for computational (text or data mining) access to the ACM Digital Library. More information on the ACM site
Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu
BioMed Central
Electrochemical Society
MIT Libraries’ subscription to ECS Plus provides current MIT authors with free, unlimited credits to publish articles open access.
To take advantage of this, choose Open Access in the submission process:
If authors wish to have their paper published OA if accepted, they should request Open Access Publication, select the desired CC license (ECS offers CC-BY and CC-BY-NC-ND), and check the box for affiliation with an ECS Plus subscriber institution. If the paper is accepted, there will be no invoice; the system will confirm the affiliation and waive the article processing charge.
More information on publishing OA with ECS Plus (PDF from ECS)
Frontiers
MIT Libraries’ membership provides currently affiliated MIT authors with a 15% discount on article processing fees for Frontiers journals.
MDPI
PLOS
MIT Libraries has two open-access publishing agreements with the nonprofit publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) that allow MIT authors to publish in all PLOS titles with no publishing fees. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu
Author instructions for all other PLOS journals (from PLOS)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Royal Society
Royal Society of Chemistry
MIT Libraries’ agreement includes full access to RSC’s journals and OA publishing with no fees for authors. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Author guide flyer from RSC (pdf)
Background on our RSC agreements: In early 2020, the MIT Libraries and the Royal Society of Chemistry extended our 2018 read & publish agreement.
Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu
Science
Current MIT-affiliated corresponding authors whose papers are accepted in Science Advances are eligible for a 30% discount on APCs. As the authors proceed through the payment process for the APC, there should be a pop-up for applicable discounts, one of which is the affiliation discount. The dropdown list should auto-populate with MIT or Massachusetts Institute of Technology either based the corresponding author’s affiliation or once they start typing into the free text search field. Once their institution is chosen, it should auto-populate the eligible affiliation discount.
Also: As of January 2022, MIT authors no longer need to obtain a waiver of MIT’s open access policy when publishing in Science journals.
Springer Nature
MIT Libraries signed a four-year agreement (to December 2025) that allows MIT corresponding authors publishing in about 2,000 Springer or Palgrave journals to make their articles OA at no cost to them. The agreement includes 101, 105, 108, 112 OA articles for each of the four years.
Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Not all journals are part of the agreement. Nature journals are not part of the agreement.
More information on the Springer site
SpringerOpen journals are not included in the Springer agreement. However: MIT Libraries’ membership provides current MIT authors with a 15% discount on article processing fees for SpringerOpen and BMC journals. More information on the Springer site
Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu
Taylor & Francis
MIT Libraries signed a three-year agreement (to December 2024) that allows MIT corresponding authors publishing in Taylor & Francis open access & open select journals to make their articles OA at no cost to them. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Authors will be asked to select MIT from a drop-down list.
Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu
Wiley
MIT Libraries signed a three-year agreement (to December 2024) that allows MIT corresponding authors to make primary research and review articles open access at no cost to them. The agreement includes 190 OA articles/year. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. To qualify, articles must be published in either a fully open access or a hybrid journal and must have been accepted on or after 1 January 2022. More information on the Wiley site
Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu
Support for open infrastructure & initiatives
Archive-IT
The Libraries licenses access to the Archive-IT web archiving service to manage the archiving and access to web sites from the Institute and its affiliates.
arXiv
DOAJ
Free Journal Network
MIT Libraries financially supports the Free Journal Network, a nonprofit that helps diamond open access journals (those that are free to read and publish in) coordinate their efforts and share best practices. FJN offers grants to journals to make improvements to their performance, and they promote the Fair Open Access model.
Global Press Archive
In partnership with the Center for Research Libraries and East View, MIT Libraries is a sponsor of Global Press Archive, which will provide open access for hundreds of global newspapers as searchable online archives, covering a diverse range of languages and countries. The collections are currently under development and are not yet available.
HathiTrust
Knowledge Futures Group
Knowledge Unlatched
Language Science Press
Libraria
MIT Press Direct to Open
MIT Libraries contributed $100,000 to the MIT Press initiative Direct to Open (D2O). These funds were used to encourage participation in D2O by smaller and less well-resourced institutions by subsidizing their participation.
The Libraries has previously funded the MIT Press Strong Ideas series, as well as funding an additional 5-10 scholarly OA monographs each year. A sample of titles made open through this funding include: The Mobile Workshop (Mavhunga, 2018), Resonant Games (Klopfer, 2019), Does America need more innovators? (Wisnioski, 2019).
MIT Press open access journals
The Libraries provided funding for the launch of Quantitative Science Studies, published jointly with the International Society for Informetrics and Scientometrics, and Neurobiology of Language, published jointly with the Society for the Neurobiology of Language.
Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP)
Open Library of the Humanities
Reveal Digital Collections
SCOAP3 journals
SocArXiv
The MIT Libraries is a supporter of SocArxiv, the social sciences’ open archive. SocArXiv is led by a steering committee of sociologists and research library leaders, including MIT Libraries Director Chris Bourg.
TRAIL Project
Open access titles supported individually
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development: the world’s only peer-reviewed, transdisciplinary journal focused solely on food and farming-related community development.
NextCity: Next City provides daily online coverage of the leaders, policies and innovations driving progress in metropolitan regions across the world.
Phil Papers: PhilPapers is a comprehensive index and bibliography of philosophy maintained by the community of philosophers.
Page last updated on February 10, 2023