Policies

The UA Libraries provides journal publishing services to the University of Arizona campus community and beyond as part of our efforts supporting and promoting open access publication of scholarly literature. Our journal publication and hosting services support the land grant mission of the University of Arizona and align with our commitment to advance open and unfettered access to research communication. UA Libraries commitment to open practices is evidenced by our Investments in Open. Our Commitment to Open, and our support of the UA Campus Open Access Policy.

The UA Libraries currently publishes or hosts new and archival content for over 20 journals. Content is published on either the open source Janeway publishing platform or in the UA Campus Repository. These publications are all freely available to view online and download.


Publish with Us:

The UA Libraries invite journal editors to consider publishing with us. A direct tie or connection to UA, either through department/unit sponsorship, faculty member, researcher, student group, or other UA-affiliation is a prerequisite for consideration of inclusion in the UA Libraries journal publishing portfolio.

New titles will be evaluated for inclusion based upon alignment with the defined scope of the journal publishing service, namely:

  • Fully open access publication model with no author- or reader-facing charges,
  • Journals publishing peer-reviewed scholarly content,
  • Support of UA student publications,
  • Support of scholarly publications intended to reach scholarly and non-scholarly audiences alike,
  • Support of highly interdisciplinary journals,
  • Support of journals that align with the collections of UA Library Special Collections: literature, sciences, Arizona and Southwest history, lands and history of Arizona and the U.S./Mexican borderlands region.

Additionally, the program is interested in investigating, developing, and supporting innovative forms of scholarly content delivery, supporting digital humanities scholarship, and exploring and supporting new forms of peer review. Potential journal publishing partnerships with groups or individuals exploring these emerging areas are also considered for inclusion.

If you are interested in publishing with us, please email us at lbry-journals@email.arizona.edu.


Responsibilities:

Our journal publishing partners retain the sole responsibility for providing content for their journals and managing their journal websites. We provide significant support during the onboarding process; once a journal is actively publishing, the publishing partner independently assumes the major publishing responsibilities.

The UA Libraries provide:

  • Initial training and consultation about best open access journal publication practices, publication workflows, site functionality, copyright, etc.
  • Initial set-up and customization of journal web sites
  • Ongoing consultation and training as needed
  • Liaising with platform developers as needed
  • Ongoing publication platform support
  • Preservation of journal articles and associated metadata
  • Registering ISSN and DOIs
  • Information and advice on copyright and licensing
  • Consultation on applying for Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) and other indexing/abstracting services

Publishing partners are responsible for:

  • Preparation of all journal galleys in appropriate formats
  • Submit complete and accurate metadata for published articles
  • Assuming all responsibility for obtaining the authors’ agreements to include their material in the journal and obtain any necessary permissions of re-use of any copyrighted materials
  • Managing editorial workflow process, including:
    • Soliciting submissions
    • Managing the review process
    • Ensuring author compliance with copyright law
    • Corresponding with authors, reviewers, and editorial staff
    • Providing user support to authors and reviewers
  • Managing production workflow process, including:
    • Copyediting
    • Typesetting
    • Proofing
    • Graphic design
    • Content formatting
    • Layout
    • Metadata creation, entry, and correction
    • Publication scheduling
    • Uploading articles and creating journal issues
  • Maintaining accurate and current journal website with instructions for authors, policies, submission guidelines, etc.
  • Onboarding of new editorial staff members

Fees:

The UA Libraries provides its basic journal publishing service at no cost to its publishing partners. The only exceptions to this policy are costs that may be associated with custom programming necessary for migration of journal back content (backfiles), digitization of back content prior to migration, or retroactive assignment and registration of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for back content.

Any costs associated with back content migration, digitization, or retroactive DOI assignment must be agreed to by both parties prior to commencement of migration work.


Accessibility

Journal editors are responsible for providing fully accessible documents for newly published journal content. Legacy content that is not fully accessible may be migrated into the service regardless of its accessibility status.


Preservation

We ensure preservation of journal content hosted on the Janeway platform via Portico, a community-supported preservation archive that safeguards access to e-journals, e-books and digital collections for future generations of researchers, scholars, and students. Journal content hosted in the UA Campus Repository is preserved via in-house archiving workflows and storage on internal Library servers.

Journal articles are preserved, but not journal web pages. Only published versions of articles are preserved.


Copyright Take-down Requests

If you wish to request or inquire about removal of digital material you believe is infringing your copyright, please submit the following information to the UA Libraries Journals Team:

  • Contact information (email address and phone number);
  • Indication of whether you are making the request on behalf of yourself or in your role as an agent for the copyright holder;
  • URL of the digital content;
  • Reason why you believe the digital content violates intellectual property or privacy rights;
  • Statements attesting that the requestor is acting in good faith and the information is accurate.

The process for consideration and removal of journal articles published or hosted by the UA Libraries will follow specific retraction guidelines adopted by the Libraries’ journal publishing partner (the specific journal) or the Retraction Guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Notice of retraction will be clearly indicated on the journal’s website. A tombstone page will remain on the journal’s website indicating the removal of previously published content.


Diversity Statement

Diversity is one the five core values of the UA Libraries. We enrich our work through the exchange of many voices and ideas and by embracing differences. Through our journal publishing service, we strive to support a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse range of voices in the scholarly communication ecosystem. We encourage journal editors to provide opportunities for contributors from communities underrepresented in the scholarly literature. We encourage our publishing partners to build editorial boards and peer reviewer pools that include a diversity of identities, geographies, perspectives, and lived experience appropriate to the scope of the journal.