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
Microbiology Society (New!)
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.
Peer review process
Editorial team/contact for information
Author fees
Copyright
Journal's website
Direct marketing
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).
ORCID ID - UGA offers ORCID ID registration and support to establish researcher PIDs
DOIs & Handles - many discipline-specific repositories, open access repositories, and publication services offer PIDs for published outputs that can be connected to a researcher.
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.
The main purpose of U.S. intellectual property laws (copyright, patents, and trademarks) is to reward authors and inventors for their creativity while balancing public interest in using those products
Copyright law confers a set of exclusive rights to authors for their works for a limited time.
The U.S. Constitution established copyright law in Article I, Section 8: "Congress shall have the power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries“
Copyright law allows authors to financially benefit from their creative works within a limited time frame, after which their works fall into the public domain.
While works are under copyright protection, the public may use them under certain conditions: with permission from the owner or without permission if the use qualifies for an exception (example: educational fair use or the work is in the public domain (i.e, not protected by copyright)
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:
Section 107 Fair Use
Section 108 Library copying and ILL
Section 109(a) First sale
Section 110(1) Display and perform works in f2f classroom teaching
Section 110(2) Display and perform works in distance learning
Section 121 Special formats for the blind or otherwise disabled
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:
Reproduce
Distribute
Create derivative works
Display work publicly
Perform work publicly
Perform work publicly by digital audio transmission (sound recordings)
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:
Minimally Creative
Original
Fixed in a tangible medium
Copyright formality (registering with the Copyright Office)
© Notice & registration was dropped for works published after
March 1, 1989 – they receive automatic copyright protection
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:
literary works
musical works, including any accompanying words
dramatic works, including any accompanying music
pantomimes and choreographic works
pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
motion pictures and other audiovisual works
sound recordings
architectural works
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).