For nearly three decades academic libraries have licensed much of their journal content in the form of large bundles or ‘Big Deals’ from each of the major academic publishers. The Open Access (OA) movement however is changing academic publishing and so Big Deals are changing too, resulting in agreements of increasing complexity that also offer authors OA publishing at no additional cost to themselves. These are commonly known as Transitional Agreements.
Library Services are constantly reviewing/negotiating these agreements and this page will present key information about negotiations where we have identified a risk to future access or publishing.
News
5 March 2024
Following on from February’s OA update covering Religious Minorities Online, we are pleased to introduce some OA journals published by Brill covering Religion, History, Literature and Medicine. These five titles cover a wide range of scholarly articles appealing to a wide range of academic study. As a publisher Brill have very useful content on their webpages, including information about spotting predatory publishers. The titles in this deal are listed below, and if you have any thoughts or comments on them please contact your Engagement Advisor.
- Jesuit Historiography Online (JHO) is an Open Access resource offering over seventy historiographical essays written by experts. Aimed at scholars of Jesuit history as well as the many disciplines with which it intersects. JHO is available on FindIt@Bham now.
- A Literary History of Medicine offers a complete, annotated translation along with a new edition of the celebrated, informative and entertaining history of medicine – the first of its kind – by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (who died in 1270), together with several introductory essays. Generously funded by the Wellcome Trust, this is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. This resource is available in FindIt@Bham now.
- Catalog of Catalogs Online: A Bibliography of Temporary Exhibition Catalogs Since 1876 that Contain Items of Judaica. It documents nearly 2,300 temporary exhibition catalogues, 1876-2018. It provides highly-detailed indices of these publications' subjects, exhibited objects and geographical foci. The Catalog of Catalogs Online is on available on FindIt@Bham.
- Storey Online - Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey is the most authoritative reference work on the Persian written tradition, offering the names of authors and the titles of those of their works that have survived in the Persian language. Storey Online is available on FindIt@Bham now.
- Encyclopaedia Iranica Online is the most renowned reference work in the field of Iran studies. Founded by the late Professor Ehsan Yarshater and edited at the Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University, this monumental international project brings together the scholarship about Iran of thousands of authors around the world. Take a look at this resource on FindIt@Bham.
5 February 2024
This month in Open Access news we are highlighting our access to Religious Minorities Online, an Open Access database published by De Gruyter which is dedicated to scholarly, peer-reviewed, research about religious minorities. Each article covers key themes in the study of religious minorities, looking at specific countries and regions as well as specific religious communities and the challenges they face. We also have a publishing agreement with De Gruyter that has expanded in 2024 to cover a wider range of hybrid and fully OA journals. You can search for these journals on Scifree or see our agreements.
11 January 2024
Subscribe to Open (S2O) agreements are a relatively new model in the world of Open Access. Under this agreement, if enough institutions subscribe, new volumes are published open access under a Creative Commons licence. If support is insufficient, the paywall is retained. As part of our dedicated to supporting OA initiatives we currently have an S2O subscription agreement with Berghahn Open Anthro which gives us, and the rest of the world, access to a selection of their hybrid journals supporting Arts and Social Science subjects. We encourage academics to explore the journals on offer, and let us know if you have any thoughts about this model.
5 December 2023
Open Access publishing options can be confusing but Library Services are working to make this process easier. We have signed up to many publisher agreements that cover open access publishing charges for University of Birmingham authors, and we now have a journal search tool to help you easily check whether a specific title is covered. SciFree allows University of Birmingham academics to check whether a journal allows them to publish open access for no additional cost, and what the next steps are.
If you want, or are required, to publish your research in an OA format then search for the journal title in SciFree. If your title is listed, select the 'Who pays' icon for eligibility and further instructions. If your title is not found, you may still be able to publish open access, so please see our publishing open access information for your options.
Significant ongoing negotiation
If there is a new transitional agreement that you think we should consider, please let us know why at publisher-negotiations@lists.bham.ac.uk.