OA Journals in eScholarship

The California Digital Library’s eScholarship provides an open-access digital publishing platform for the University of California. To date, there are 35 journals in the repository including many of interest to those who work with romance languages: California Italian Studies Journal (UCOP), Carte Italiane (UCLA), Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (UCLA) , Litterae Caelestes (UCLA), Mester (UCLA), and Paroles gelées (UCLA).

Open access (OA) is a growing  international movement that provides a means for authors to retain copyright and disseminate their research without restriction. The Library has made available a basic definition with a list of resources to consult. Much has been written about open access. In April, an informative report titled “Open Access in France” was published. In May, a similar report titled “Open Access to Scholarly Outputs in Spain” was presented at a seminar in Granada. Also last month, the director of Collections here at Berkeley and the head of the Biosciences Library co-published an article titled “Institutional Open Access Funds: Now Is the Time” that discusses the success of initiatives like the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative which directly funds Berkeley researchers who publish in OA or hybrid OA journals that require publishing fees.

If you are considering launching a new scholarly journal or moving an existing journal to a more green open-access platform, you may want to read more about the benefits of open-access publishing , including greater discoverability,  increased citations, author retention of copyright, perpetual access, and more. To find out how to receive funding for publishing an individual article in an OA or hybrid OA journal, please visit the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) web site.