By Christina Gattone, Research Impact Librarian 

International Open Access week is October 21st-27th, and the theme is Community over Commercialization, encouraging us all to “prioritize approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community.” Open access seeks to eliminate barriers to data and publications, making them feely available, and increasing engagement among both public and academic research audiences. ​Although open access is a publishing option for many types of scholarly outputs, it is most often associated with journals. 

There are benefits to publishing in an open access journal beyond greater accessibility to your research and a wider audience – these often translate into more citations and attention to your work outside of academia: mass media, policy documents and patents, social media, etc. Also, many funders require that funded research is published in an open access journal, so it’s often necessary for compliance.  

There are many versions of open access journals available, usually described using colors: ​ 

• Gold Open Access: Gold open access journals make all articles freely available on the journal's website, usually by charging the author an Article Processing Charge (APC) prior to publication​. 
• Hybrid Open Access: Hybrid open-access journals contain a mixture of open access articles and closed access articles; the content is made open access usually by charging the author an APC​. 
• Green Open Access: Green open access articles are published in closed or open journals and are made openly available in an institutional repository or another archive by the author or institution, under the permission of the publisher​. 

Open access journals often charge an expensive APC but there are discounts available to you as a Northwestern author through our transformative agreements. Most of these discounts are built into the journal’s submission process if you indicate your affiliation is Northwestern or use your northwestern.edu email address.  

Currently, Northwestern authors can publish at no cost in all Wiley hybrid journals, all Wiley gold journals, and all Hindawi journals through December 31, 2025. Corresponding authors must identify themselves as being affiliated with Northwestern University when submitting articles through the Wiley publishing workflow process. See full details here. 

There are also discounts available on APCs for MDPI journals, PNAS, and BMJ Case Reports.  

Northwestern authors will not incur APCs for accepted manuscripts in PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine, thanks to an agreement between Northwestern and the PLOS Community Action Publishing program. To ensure the benefit, upon submitting a manuscript to either PLOS Biology or PLOS Medicine, be sure to list your institutional affiliation in the submission system, Editorial Manager. 

Another way to make your published works openly available is by uploading them to Prism, Feinberg School of Medicine's institutional repository that preserves intellection works created by the Feinberg community. Institutional repositories play a crucial role in making research Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). Explore the Prism GalterGuide to learn more about how you can use Prism to enhance the visibility of your scholarship.  

Open Access Week is a valuable opportunity to connect with the global drive for open knowledge sharing and highlights the policy advancements and social issues that affect people everywhere. Join the conversation by taking the time to learn more about open access at Northwestern through our expert curated GalterGuides.