Research libraries are increasingly entering into open access agreements (sometimes called transformative agreements, read-and-publish, or publish-and-read agreements) with academic publishers to allow affiliated authors to publish open access without paying article processing charges (APCs). Under this model, libraries pay publishers for access to a journal’s full content, as well as the right to make their researchers’ work open access, under a single contract and fee. If you have any questions about open access agreements, please contact your liaison librarian or the Scholarly Impact department. 

Articles published through our Open Access agreements are listed in the UI Libraries Support Open Access collection in Iowa Research Online. Here are the open access agreements the UI Libraries has contracted so far:

As of October 2024, the funding from these agreements has saved UI authors over $3.3 million!

Increasingly, federal funding agencies, private foundations, and universities require that researchers make their grant-funded articles available to the public. Most recently, on August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released policy guidance to ensure "free, immediate, and equitable access" to federally funded research by recommending that federal agencies update their public access policies. The updated policies should "make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release".

Below are some of the agencies' and organizations' public access policies: