We are delighted to welcome nine University of California libraries to the Open Journals Collective. UC Santa Barbara, Berkeley, Irvine, Riverside, UCLA, Merced, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Davis have all joined in support of our multidisciplinary collections. Their participation represents a significant investment in the future of community-led scholarly publishing and a strong endorsement of OJC's vision.
The OJC is dedicated to transforming the way that academic research is published and disseminated, and the support of the University of California will be instrumental in helping us achieve our objectives of making journals free to read and publish in, offering a viable alternative to commercial transformative agreements, and empowering journals to flip to diamond open access.
With an open access policy in place since 2013, the University of California has long been a leader in expanding access to research and scholarship. Through its Pathways to Open Access strategy, UC has invested in a range of initiatives spanning open infrastructure, open access publishing, and community-owned scholarly communication. We are honored that UC libraries have chosen to partner with OJC as part of this commitment.
Lidia Uziel, Associate University Librarian for Research Resources and Scholarly Communication at UC Santa Barbara, incoming Vice Chair of UC Libraries’ systemwide Shared Content Leadership Group, and co-Chair of OJC’s Library Board, said, “The Open Journals Collective represents an important step toward a more sustainable and equitable future for scholarly publishing. The University of California is proud to support a community-led model that keeps scholarship openly available, empowers independent journals, and demonstrates that libraries can play a transformative role in building alternatives to commercial publishing systems. We are delighted to partner with OJC in advancing diamond open access at scale.”
Tom Shaw, the Open Journals Collective’s Library Engagement Lead, said: “To have the support of a substantial cohort of libraries from the University of California is fantastic and will allow us to make significant progress in our mission to support diamond open access publishing and build a more equitable and sustainable scholarly publishing ecosystem. This large number of libraries joining collectively sends a powerful message about the ability of libraries to effect large-scale change”.
Professor Caroline Edwards, Executive Director of the Open Journals Collective, said: “The University of California (UC) libraries have played a vital leadership role in recent years, shifting content acquisition strategies towards open. By investing at scale in OJC, UC libraries are placing their trust in OJC’s innovative model to provide the financial stability that diamond open access journals desperately need.”