Publishing and Digital Preservation

Overview

The UGA Libraries offer access and support to multiple publication services for the UGA community. Many publisher agreements allow members to access and publish content at no charge. Additionally, services like ScholarWorks provide a space for UGA authors to publish their scholarly and creative works at the institution. Information about these services and support is detailed below.

Table of Contents

Open Access Publishing

The Open Access (OA) publishing model provides free and immediate access to publications. The UGA Libraries developed agreements with many publishers providing access for members of the UGA community to read journal content at no charge and for UGA authors to publish open access journal content at no charge, avoiding Article Processing Charges (APCs) for their accepted manuscripts. The corresponding author must be affiliated with UGA (e.g., as a student, staff member, or faculty) to publish the article as open access under these agreements. 

Please make sure to use your UGA email in the submission, as it facilitates the approval process.

Open Access Agreements: No APCs

A list of current UGA Open Access publishing agreements is provided below. These agreements allow UGA authors to publish their articles open access at no additional cost. Click the link or contact us to learn more about the accepted types of publications and participating journals.

Publishing Agreement: through December 2026

Publishing Agreement: through July 31, 2028

Publishing Agreement: through December 31, 2027

Publishing Agreement: through December 2026

Publishing Agreement: through December 31, 2025

Publishing Agreement: through December 2026

Publishing Agreement: through December 31, 2025

Publishing Agreement: through December 31, 2025
*Total APCs under this agreement are capped at
180 Hybrid and 60 Gold OA publications

Open Access Agreements: Discounted APCs

Below is a list of the open access agreements between the UGA Libraries and publishers that offer UGA authors discounts towards their article processing charges.

Publishing Agreement: not available

Discount: UGA authors receive 15% discount toward their Article Processing Charge (APC) for their accepted manuscript in a BioMedCentral journal


Publishing Agreement: through August 31, 2025

Discount: UGA authors receive a 10% discount toward their APC to publish their accepted manuscripts in an MDPI journal

Author's Rights

Open access publishing is often still possible without an existing institutional publisher agreement. When your publication is accepted, you will sign an agreement with your publisher. This is your chance to negotiate the terms that meet the needs of your research. For example, if you would like to put a copy of your publication in a repository for wider accessibility and the agreement does not allow for that, you can negotiate the contract with the publisher.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has created this resource to help you draft a contract addendum and attach it to your agreement.

Evaluating Open Access Journals

How do I know I'm publishing in a quality journal?

When it comes to publishing your work, evaluating the quality of the journals is essential, regardless of them being Open Access or not. For that, it's important to be aware of different quality indicators and available tools to make sure that you find the best journal for your work. Consider the aspects below compiled by the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) when assessing an open access publisher. Click here for a full list with detailed explanations

Identifying Quality Journals

Check out the resources below if you're in doubt about the reliability of a journal or publisher. You can also consult the DOAJ database to verify a journal's reputation.

Quality Open Access Journal Resources

Think Check Submit: Identify Trusted Publishers for Your Research (OASPA)

Open Access Resources

Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis.

SPARC resource designed to help authors develop a contract addendum to attach to their publishing agreements.

UGA Open Scholar: Institutional and Research Data Repository

UGA Open Scholar is the institutional and research data repository for the University of Georgia. The platform is the digital archive for public-facing scholarly outputs generated by UGA faculty, staff, and students. This includes UGA student Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). It is designed to ensure long-term preservation, accessibility, and dissemination of the university’s academic content to support research, teaching, and public engagement.

For information on research data repositories and related support, please visit our page on Planning and Managing Research Data.

Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)

The 2022 OSTP memo recommended agencies leverage persistent identifiers (PIDs) as part of the collected and published metadata associated with research studies. Persistent identifiers are used to create unique digital identifiers for individual researchers, their research and scholarly outputs (e.g., published data sets, publications, certifications), and maintain their connection across multiple platforms (e.g., Google Scholar, UGA Elements). 

Open Journal Hosting

The UGA Libraries offer a journal publishing service to interested faculty of the University of Georgia community. We use Open Journal Systems (OJS) to help you set up your peer-reviewed, open access journal publishing. For questions, please contact us!


Copyright

Disclaimer: The following information does not constitute legal advice.

Copyright Exceptions

The law carves out a set of exceptions to owner rights that allow the public to use works while they are under copyright protection. These are the exceptions:

What are the author's copyrights?

Title 17 Section 106 U.S. Copyright Law gives authors the following set of rights for a time-limited duration

§ 106 . Exclusive rights in copyrighted works38

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

Criteria for Copyright

Criteria for copyright protection in the United States must meet the following conditions, and is easier to obtain relative to copyright protection in other countries. Upon fixing a work in a tangible medium of expression, the law confers authorip status as your work must be:

Copyright formality (registering with the Copyright Office)

Registration with the US Copyright Office is not necessary for copyright protection, but gives a stronger case if filing an infringement case is anticipated

What does copyright protect?

Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:

What is NOT protected by copyright?

Copyright law does not protect s such as facts, ideas, raw data. Section 102 of the Copyright Law provides a detailed list of things that copyright does not protect:

§ 102  (b)

In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

How long does copyright protection last?

How long does copyright protection last?

The general rule (there are many exceptions): life time of the author + 70 years (US works, published or unpublished).