As UC Berkeley’s new academic year gets underway, the Library’s Scholarly Communication & Information Policy office stands ready to guide faculty, students, and staff through the complexities of copyright law and academic publishing. Through digital resources, virtual workshops, and one-on-one consultations, we’re excited to share what this semester has in store.
Workshops
Copyright and Your Dissertation
Date/Time: Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 11:00am–12:00pm RSVP to get the Zoom link
This workshop will provide you with practical guidance for navigating copyright questions and other legal considerations for your dissertation or thesis. Whether you’re just starting to write or you’re getting ready to file, you can use our tips and workflow to figure out what you can use, what rights you have as an author, and what it means to share your dissertation online.
Managing and Maximizing Your Scholarly Impact
Date/Time: Tuesday, October 14, 2025, 11:00am–12:00pm RSVP to get the Zoom link
This workshop will provide you with practical strategies and tips for promoting your scholarship, increasing your citations, and monitoring your success. You’ll also learn how to understand metrics, use scholarly networking tools, and evaluate journals and publishing options.
From Dissertation to Book: Navigating the Publication Process
Date/Time: Tuesday, November 18, 2025 (11:00am–12:30pm) RSVP to get the Zoom link
Hear from a panel of experts—an acquisitions editor, a first-time book author, and an author rights expert—about the process of turning your dissertation into a book. You’ll come away from this panel discussion with practical advice about revising your dissertation, writing a book proposal, approaching editors, signing your first contract, and navigating the peer review and publication process.
Other ways we can help you
In addition to the workshops, we’re here to help answer a variety of questions you might have on intellectual property, digital publishing, and information policy.
Have a question about copyright and artificial intelligence (AI) in relation to research and scholarship? Or your rights and responsibilities in using library-licensed materials for AI use? View the AI page on our website for guidance.
Interested in publishing your research open access? UCB Library can help defray the costs of an article processing charge (up to $2,500) or book processing charge (up to $10,000). See the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) for more information. And explore the various UC-wide open access agreements and discounts that can help UC corresponding authors publish their scholarship open access.
Do you want to create an open digital textbook? Take a look at UC Berkeley’s Open Book Publishing platform (anyone with a @berkeley.edu email can sign up for a free account).
Keep an eye on the Library’s events calendar for more workshops and trainings.
Want help or more information? Send us an email at schol-comm@berkeley.edu. We can provide individualized support and personal consultations, online class instruction, presentations and workshops for small or large groups & classes, and customized support and training for departments and disciplines.
A variety of UC Berkeley-authored books published open access.
UC Berkeley supports a variety of ways our authors can participate in open access publishing. At its heart, open access literature is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (Suber, 2019). Open access materials can be read and used by anyone.
But you might be wondering, why is UC Berkeley concerned about trying to make research more openly available and accessible? Well, one fundamental reason is that the research and teaching mission of the UC includes the aim of “transmitting advanced knowledge,” and as part of doing that, our faculty, researchers, and students create and share their scholarship.
This system of scholarly publishing includes traditional publications such as peer-reviewed academic articles, scholarly chapters or books, and conference proceedings. It also includes other types of publications such as digital projects, data sets and visualizations, and working papers.
In this blog post, we’ll provide an update on how the UC Berkeley Library is fostering open access book publishing. And we’ll also highlight the current progress on supporting OA publishing of scholarly articles.
Library Support for Open Access Books
We know that not all University of California authors are publishing journal articles, and many disciplines—such as arts, humanities, and social sciences—focus on the scholarly monograph as the preferred mode of publishing. Some open access book publishers charge authors (or an author’s institution) a fee in exchange for publishing the book open access, similar to the practice of academic journal publishers charging an “article processing charge” to make a scholarly article open access.
Book authors can realize a variety of benefits with open access publishing, including increasing the reach of their scholarship, building relationships within their academic discipline, garnering more citations, making their scholarly books more affordable for students, improving accessibility for print-disabled users, and more.
UC Berkeley is supporting authors who wish to publish their books open access. The library provides funding assistance and access to publishing platforms and tools for UCB authors to make their books OA.
Berkeley Research Impact Initiative books
The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) is a program to foster broad public access to the work of UCB scholars by encouraging the Berkeley community to take advantage of open access publishing opportunities—including books and journal articles. BRII is the local open access fund that helps defray the costs associated with publishing open access books and research articles. For books, BRII can contribute up to $10,000 per book for it to be published open access. Below are recent UCB-authored books published with the assistance of BRII.
UC Berkeley Library continues to support open access book publishing via Luminos, the open access arm of the University of California Press. The Library membership with Luminos means that UC Berkeley authors who have books accepted for publication through the UC Press can publish their book open access with a heavily discounted book processing charge. When combined with additional funding support through BRII, a UC Berkeley book author could potentially publish their book open access with the costs being covered fully by the Library. Luminos books are published under Creative Commons licenses with free downloads.
Pressbooks platform & workshops
The UC Berkeley Library hosts an instance of Pressbooks (https://berkeley.pressbooks.pub/), an online platform through which the UC Berkeley community can create open access books, open educational resources (OER), and other types of digital scholarship. The Scholarly Communication & Information Policy (SCIP) office continues to offer an annual Pressbooks workshop and demo where participants can learn how to navigate the platform and create and publish their own eBooks and OERs.
UC contributing to the broader ecosystem of open access book publishing
A FY2024-25 goal of the UC Libraries is to strategically advance open scholarship by extending its support for OA book publishing. At the systemwide level, the UC is supporting several open access book publishing ventures, including Opening the Future, MIT’s Direct to Open, the University of Michigan Press’ Fund to Mission, the Open Book Collective, and more. These models secure investments from libraries and other stakeholders, and agree to publish some or all of their frontlist books open access, with limited or zero direct cost to the authors. The backlist books are made accessible to participating institutions.
The UC is also pursuing three pilot projects—with University of California Press, Duke University Press, and Oxford University Press—to enable the OA publication of UC-authored monographs. California Digital Library has also sponsored the opening of 35 UC-authored books included in the Big Ten Open Books collections.
Library Support for OA Journal Publishing
While the topic of this post focuses mainly on open access books, UC Berkeley (and the UC more generally) offers a wide range of support to help authors publish scholarly articles. The UC’s system wide Open Access Policies ensure that university-affiliated authors can deposit their final, peer-reviewed research articles into eScholarship, our institutional repository, immediately upon publication in a journal. Once they’re in eScholarship, the articles may be read by anyone for free.
As of August 2025, the University of California has 28 system-wide Open Access Publishing Agreements and Discounts with scholarly publishers. These agreements permit UC corresponding authors to publish open access in covered journals, with the publishing fees being covered in part (or in full) by the UC. In fiscal year 2024-25 UC Berkeley authors published 1,032 open access articles as a part of these system wide open access publishing agreements.
Locally, the UC Berkeley Library continues to offer the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII). This program helps UC Berkeley authors defray article processing charges (APCs) that are sometimes required to publish in fully open access journals (note that BRII doesn’t reimburse authors for publishing in “hybrid” journals—that is, subscription journals that simply offer a separate option to pay to make an individual article open access). This past year BRII provided funding for the publication of 44 open access articles. UC Berkeley authors can take advantage of BRII assistance where there is no other system wide open access agreement in place.
Wrapping up
In this post, we highlighted several ways that the University of California—and specifically UC Berkeley—is supporting scholarly authors to create and share open access books. In addition to providing financial assistance, platforms, and publishing guidance, the Library is committed to promoting the broader OA book publishing ecosystem. We’ll continue to explore a variety of approaches to support the UC Berkeley community (and beyond) who wish to publish books on open access terms.
If you’re interested to learn more about how you can create and publish an open access book, visit our website or send an email to schol-comm@berkeley.edu.
If you receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a recent policy update will impact how you publish and share your research.
Beginning on July 1, 2025, all author accepted manuscripts (defined below) accepted for publication in a journal must be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC), and will be made publicly available at the same time that the article is officially published, with no embargo allowed. The NIH’s 2024 Public Access Policy replaces the 2008 policy that permitted up to a 12-month embargo on public access.
Does the NIH Public Access Policy apply to you?
If your publication results from any NIH funding, including 1) grants or cooperative agreements (including training grants), 2) contracts, 3) other transactions, 4) NIH intramural research, or 5) NIH employee work, then the NIH public access policy applies to you.
What do you need to do?
The author accepted manuscript (AAM) must be deposited in the NIH Manuscript Submission System immediately upon acceptance in a journal. The AAM is “the author’s final version that has been accepted for journal publication and includes all revisions resulting from the peer review process, including all associated tables, graphics, and supplemental material.” The updated NIH Public Access Policy echoes the 2008 policy in that deposit compliance is generally achieved through submission of the AAM by the author or author’s institution to PubMed Central.
AAMs will be made publicly available in PubMed Central (NIH’s repository) on the official date of publication in the journal, with no embargo period.
According to the supplemental guidance on the Government Use License and Rights, accepting NIH funding means granting NIH a nonexclusive license to make your author accepted manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central. Authors are required to agree to the following terms:
“I hereby grant to NIH, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use this work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so. This grant of rights includes the right to make the final, peer-reviewed manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication.”
The supplemental guidance also recommends that grantees should consider including the following NIH-recommended language in your manuscript submission to journals:
“This manuscript is the result of funding in whole or in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy. Through acceptance of this federal funding, NIH has been given a right to make this manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication, as defined by NIH.”
Will I be charged for publishing the AAM open access?
Depositing the AAM in PMC is free and fulfills your public access compliance obligations under the NIH Policy. (Note: Berkeley authors are also asked to submit the AAM to eScholarship to fulfill their obligations under the UC’s Open Access Policy.)
Authors are not required to pay an article processing charge (APC) to comply with this policy. However, the journal in which you are publishing may separately wish to charge you an APC for publishing open access through their own platform. You may be eligible to allocate some of your NIH grant funds to cover the journal’s APC. NIH has provided supplemental guidance regarding allowable publishing costs to include in NIH grants. In addition, the University of California continues to support publishing through open access publishing agreements. Through these and other local programs such as the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative, UC Berkeley authors have options for open access publishing with the UC Libraries covering some or all of the associated publishing fees. For questions about open access publishing options, please contact schol-comm@berkeley.edu.
What about data?
The NIH’s updated Public Access Policy combines with the already-in-place Data Management and Sharing Policy. That policy says that all NIH funded research that generates scientific data requires the submission of a Data Management and Sharing Plan as part of the grant proposal.
There is an expectation for researchers to maximize appropriate data sharing in established repositories. Data should be made accessible as soon as possible, and no later than the time of the associated publication or end of award, whichever comes first.
Where can I learn more?
Join UC Berkeley Library staff on Tuesday, June 10, 2025 from 1:00-2:00 pm on Zoom for an overview of the NIH Public Access Policy changes. The presentation will cover the key updates that take effect on July 1, 2025, including the mandatory manuscript submission to PubMed Central, how to navigate acknowledgement requirements, copyright and licensing, and the NIH data sharing requirements. You will also learn how the Library and other units on campus can provide ongoing support with the new policy. All registrants will receive a link to a recording of the session.
Do you have specific questions? Reach out to Anna, Elliott, or Tim.
Date/Time: Tuesday, April 8, 11:00am–12:00pm Location: Zoom. RSVP.
Are you wondering what processes, platforms, and funding are available at UC Berkeley to publish your research open access (OA)? This workshop will provide practical guidance and walk you through all of the OA publishing options and funding sources you have on campus. We’ll explain: the difference between (and mechanisms for) self-depositing your research in the UC’s institutional repository vs. choosing publisher-provided OA; what funding is available to put toward your article or book charges if you choose a publisher-provided option; and the difference between funding coverage under the UC’s systemwide OA agreements vs. the Library’s funding program (Berkeley Research Impact Initiative). We’ll also give you practical tips and tricks to maximize your retention of rights and readership in the publishing process.
Date/Time: Tuesday, March 11, 2025, 11:00am–12:00pm Location: Zoom. RSVP.
If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn why and how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. You’ll leave the workshop with a project already under way.
With the spring semester kicking off, the Library’s Scholarly Communication & Information Policy office is here to help faculty, students, and staff understand copyright and scholarly publishing with online resources, Zoom workshops, and consultations. Read on below for a quick update.
Workshops
Publish Digital Books & Open Educational Resources with Pressbooks
If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn why and how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. You’ll leave the workshop with a project already under way.
Are you wondering what processes, platforms, and funding are available at UC Berkeley to publish your research open access (OA)? This workshop will provide practical guidance and walk you through all of the OA publishing options and funding sources you have on campus. We’ll explain: the difference between (and mechanisms for) self-depositing your research in the UC’s institutional repository vs. choosing publisher-provided OA; what funding is available to put toward your article or book charges if you choose a publisher-provided option; and the difference between funding coverage under the UC’s systemwide OA agreements vs. the Library’s funding program (Berkeley Research Impact Initiative). We’ll also give you practical tips and tricks to maximize your retention of rights and readership in the publishing process.
Other ways we can help you
In addition to the workshops, we’re here to help answer a variety of questions you might have on intellectual property, digital publishing, and information policy.
Have a question about copyright and artificial intelligence (AI) in relation to research and scholarship? Or your rights and responsibilities in using library-licensed materials for AI use? View the AI page on our website for guidance.
Interested in publishing your research open access? UCB Library can help defray the costs of an article processing charge (up to $2,500) or book processing charge (up to $10,000). See the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) for more information. And explore the various UC-wide open access agreements and discounts that can help UC corresponding authors publish their scholarship open access.
Do you want to create an open digital textbook? Take a look at UC Berkeley’s Open Book Publishing platform (anyone with a @berkeley.edu email can sign up for a free account), and get in touch with us about our Open Educational Resources (OER) grant program.
Keep an eye on the Library’s events calendar for more workshops and trainings.
Want help or more information? Send us an email at schol-comm@berkeley.edu. We can provide individualized support and personal consultations, online class instruction, presentations and workshops for small or large groups & classes, and customized support and training for departments and disciplines.
Today, California Digital Library launched the Journal Open Access Look-up Tool (JOLT).
What is it?
It’s a website (jolt.cdlib.org) that enables authors to search by a given journal title to determine whether it is eligible for financial support under one of UC’s systemwide open access publishing agreements. Recall that UC’s OA publishing agreements help defray the payment of open access fees in order to make UC scholarship freely available to readers around the world.
How does it work?
JOLT acts as a standard search bar. Users can search by journal title and ISSN. Journals with well-known abbreviations (e.g. “PLOS” for Public Library of Science) are searchable by their acronyms.
Journals in the search results will include one of three labels:
Full funding on request
Partial funding or discount
No support available
Clicking on a search result will expand it to reveal more details, including the specific level of funding provided, the publisher, and links to the agreement FAQ and payment workflow details on the Office of Scholarly Communication website. If a title search does not yield any results, it means the journal is not covered by an agreement.
Please contact the Scholarly Communication + Information Policy office at schol-comm@berkeley.edu if you have any questions.
UC Berkeley supports a variety of ways our authors can participate in open access publishing. At its heart, open access literature is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (Suber, 2019). Open access materials can be read and used by anyone.
But you might be wondering, why is UC Berkeley concerned about trying to make research more openly available and accessible? Well, one fundamental reason is that the research and teaching mission of the UC includes the aim of “transmitting advanced knowledge,” and as part of doing that, our faculty, researchers, and students create and share their scholarship.
This system of scholarly publishing includes traditional publications such as peer-reviewed academic articles, scholarly chapters or books, and conference proceedings. It also includes other types of publications such as digital projects, data sets and visualizations, and working papers.
In this blog post, we’ll provide an update on how the UC Berkeley Library is fostering open access book publishing. And we’ll also highlight the current progress on supporting OA publishing of scholarly articles.
Library Support for Open Access Books
We know that not all University of California authors are publishing journal articles, and many disciplines—such as arts, humanities, and social sciences—focus on the scholarly monograph as the preferred mode of publishing. Some open access book publishers charge authors (or an author’s institution) a fee in exchange for publishing the book open access, similar to the practice of academic journal publishers charging an “article processing charge” to make a research article open access.
Book authors can realize a variety of benefits with open access publishing, including increasing the reach of their scholarship, building relationships within their academic discipline, garnering more citations, making their scholarly books more affordable for students, improving accessibility for print-disabled users, and more.
UC Berkeley is supporting authors who wish to publish their books open access. The library provides funding assistance and access to publishing platforms and tools for authors to make their books OA.
Berkeley Research Impact Initiative books
The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) is a program to foster broad public access to the work of scholars by encouraging the UCB community to take advantage of open access publishing opportunities—including books and journal articles. BRII is the local open access fund that helps defray the costs associated with publishing open access books and research articles. For books, BRII can contribute up to $10,000 per book for it to be published open access. Below are recent UCB-authored books published with the assistance of BRII.
The Equitably Resilient City
Zachary B. Lamb (Assistant Professor, City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley) and Lawrence J. Vale (MIT)
Since 2021, the UC Berkeley Library has had an institutional open access book agreement with Springer Nature. The partnership provides open access funding to UC Berkeley affiliated authors who have books accepted for publication in Springer, Palgrave, and Apress imprints. This means that these authors can publish their books open access at no direct cost to them. The agreement covers all disciplines published by Springer. Every book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license for free access and downloading. Here are a few recent books published open access as a result of the UCB-Springer agreement.
University-Community Partnerships for Transformative Education: Sowing Seeds of Resistance and Renewal
Mara Welsh Mahmood (School of Education, UC Berkeley), John Cano (School of Education, UC Berkeley), Marjorie Elaine (School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA)
This open access edited volume reports on a unique network of innovative in-school and out-of-school programs, University-Community Links (UC Links), which is coordinated through the UC Links Office in the Berkeley School of Education. UC Links connects university faculty and students with young people and their families in diverse communities around the world. University-Community Partnerships for Transformative Education: Sowing Seeds of Resistance and Renewal includes 20 chapters describing university-community partnerships and programs in California in the US as well as Germany, Italy, Spain, Uganda, and Uruguay (both in English and Spanish!). The volume also includes first-person reflections describing how participation in UC Links programs has transformed participants’ thinking about teaching and learning and also has transformed individual lives.
Co-editor Mara Welsh Mahmood says:
“It was imperative to all contributing authors that the knowledge and experiences described in this volume be accessible to anyone interested in learning more about these university-community partnership programs. Authors envisioned using the chapters in their courses and also being able to share them with school and community partners without associated costs. The UC Berkeley Open Access agreement with Springer allows this book to be given away—young people who contributed first-person narratives can share this with their families and friends; academic scholars interested in developing a partnership with a local school or community can easily point people to the book to learn more about what these partnerships can look like in practice. Already the book has been accessed 16,000 times after two months of publication!”
Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization: Rock Art in the 21st Century
Margaret W. Conkey (Professor Emerita of Anthropology, UC Berkeley), Oscar Moro Abadía (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Josephine McDonald (University of Western Australia)
UC Berkeley Library continues to support open access book publishing via Luminos, the open access arm of the University of California Press. The Library membership with Luminos means that UC Berkeley authors who have books accepted for publication through the UC Press can publish their book open access with a heavily discounted book processing charge. When combined with additional funding support through BRII, a UC Berkeley book author could potentially publish their book open access with the costs being covered fully by the Library. Luminos books are published under Creative Commons licenses with free downloads.
Pressbooks platform & workshops
The UC Berkeley Library hosts an instance of Pressbooks, an online platform through which the UCB community members can create open access books, open educational resources (OER), and other types of digital scholarship.
The Scholarly Communication & Information Policy (SCIP) office continues to offer twice/year Pressbooks workshop and demo where participants can learn how to navigate the platform and create and publish their own eBooks and open educational resources. (Note: we just hosted a workshop in September, but watch out for another one coming soon.)
Every year during the fall semester SCIP hosts an author panel to unpack the process of turning a dissertation into a book. One of the topics discussed during the panel are options for open access publishing. RSVP now for the upcoming author panel on November 12, 2024, 11:00am-12:30pm.
UC contributing to the broader ecosystem of open access book publishing
A goal of the UC Libraries is to strategically advance open scholarship by extending its support for OA book publishing. At the systemwide level, the UC is contributing to several open access book publishing ventures, including Opening the Future, MIT’s Direct to Open, the University of Michigan Press’ Fund to Mission, and the Open Book Collective. In general, these models secure investments from libraries or other stakeholders, and agree to publish some or all of their frontlist books open access, with limited or zero direct cost to the authors. The backlist books are made accessible to participating institutions.
Library Support for Open Access Articles
While the topic of this post focuses mainly on open access books, UC Berkeley (and the UC more generally) offers a wide range of support to help authors publish scholarly articles. The UC’s system-wide Open Access Policies ensure that university-affiliated authors can deposit their final, peer-reviewed research articles into eScholarship, our institutional repository, immediately upon publication in a journal. Once they’re in eScholarship, the articles may be read by anyone for free (not to mentioned preserved for longer term access).
As of October 2024, the University of California has entered into 24 system-wide Open Access Publishing Agreements and Discounts with scholarly publishers (most recently a new agreement with Taylor & Francis). These agreements permit UC corresponding authors to publish open access in covered journals, with the publishing fees being covered in part (or in full) by the UC. In fiscal year 2023-24 UC Berkeley authors published 527 open access articles as a part of these system wide open access publishing agreements.
Locally, the UC Berkeley Library continues to offer the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII). This program helps UC Berkeley authors defray article processing charges (APCs) that are sometimes required to publish in fully open access journals (note that BRII doesn’t reimburse authors for publishing in “hybrid” journals—that is, subscription journals that simply offer a separate option to pay to make an individual article open access). This past year BRII provided funding for the publication of 45 open access articles. UC Berkeley authors can take advantage of BRII assistance where there is no other system wide open access agreement in place.
Wrapping up
In this post, we highlighted several ways that the University of California—and specifically UC Berkeley—is supporting scholarly authors to create and share open access books. In addition to providing financial assistance, platforms, and publishing guidance, the Library is committed to promoting the broader OA book publishing ecosystem. We’ll continue to explore a variety of approaches to support the UC Berkeley community (and beyond) who wish to publish books on open access terms.
If you’re interested to learn more about how you can create and publish an open access book, visit our website or send an email to schol-comm@berkeley.edu.
Date/Time: Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 11:00am–12:30pm Location: Zoom. RSVP.
Hear from a panel of experts—an acquisitions editor, a first-time book author, and an author rights expert—about the process of turning your dissertation into a book. You’ll come away from this panel discussion with practical advice about revising your dissertation, writing a book proposal, approaching editors, signing your first contract, and navigating the peer review and publication process.
Date/Time: Tuesday, October 15, 2024, 11:00am–12:00pm Location: Zoom. RSVP.
This workshop will provide you with practical strategies and tips for promoting your scholarship, increasing your citations, and monitoring your success. You’ll also learn how to understand metrics, use scholarly networking tools, and evaluate journals and publishing options.
