Open @ UTA Libraries
Open @ UTA Libraries is the umbrella for all our open access and open education initiatives. We are committed to open across our services and as a major component of our advocacy among academic libraries and in higher education.
Open access refers to making information relevant to the public available freely and immediately upon publication. Open access can also include reader/user rights to use the information in a variety of ways. Open access offers scholars and educations more visibility and affordability for the materials they wish to publish and share.
Open education refers to a focus on educational opportunity that is inclusive, affordable, and accessible. Open education and open pedagogy practitioners strive to eliminate barriers to education and to increase the contributions of students to curricula. Open educational resources (OER) are one key part of improving educational affordability today.
We support faculty, students, and staff in all aspects of open access publishing, open education, open scholarship, and advocacy.
Our initiatives include:
- Publishing and preserving open access materials
- Open Educational Resource (OER) publishing under Mavs Open Press
- Open access journal publishing under Mavs Open Press
- Open access sharing and preservation of a variety of materials in the UTA ResearchCommons institutional repository
- Open access data publishing and preservation in the UTA Mavs DataVerse
- Offering open access reading and publishing agreements to our campus community
- Developing and implementing open access digital scholarly and curricular partnerships
- Funding open scholarship and open pedagogy
- Supporting copyright awareness and informed use, including:
- Fair use of copyrighted information
- Selection and application of Creative Commons licenses
- Retention of authors’ rights in scholarly publishing
- Student and early-career awareness of intellectual property and copyright in academia
- Advocating for open access and the open movement
- Authors’ rights and broader awareness of copyright opportunities/challenges
- Models of knowledge dissemination that reduce barriers to access
- Collaborative strategies to support educational affordability
Open Access Quick Guide
| Open access level/color | Brief definition | How much does it get us? |
|---|---|---|
| Gray open access | self-archiving whereby authors make their work accessible in a personal venue online or via shared print copies |
|
| Green open access | a version (usually a pre-print) of the publication is in an open access repository, like the UTA ResearchCommons or arXiv.org |
|
| Hybrid open access | an open access publication offered in a primarily subscription journal (which keeps other publications behind paywalls) |
|
| Gold open access | immediate open access offered by the publisher under a Creative Commons re-use license across an entire publication venue |
|
| Diamond/ Platinum open access |
immediate open access under a Creative Commons re-use license without any fees to authors |
|
Resources to explore the open movement and open access more:
Recent Blog Posts
The Way IR: Making ETDs Globally Accessible from the Jump Off
Grad Students! This one’s for you. Learn how publishing in an institutional repository puts power in authors’ hands and research at the forefront.
Read more about The Way IR: Making ETDs Globally Accessible from the Jump Off
Imbedded Projects: Celestial Maps Digital Exhibit
This blog discusses a digital project created in partnership with a history course at UTA.
Read more about Imbedded Projects: Celestial Maps Digital Exhibit
What's behind that paywall?
Paywalls are all over our lives and there’s something more than money that they require.
Read more about What's behind that paywall?
Improving the Accessibility of Health Information
We facilitated a hackathon to create tools to improve the public's access to trustworthy health information.
Afro-Latin American Studies
PALARA, the journal of the Afro-Latin/American Research Association, is an international scholarly publication using Mavs Open Press, our open access publishing platform for journals, monographs, and textbooks.