New Open Access Publishing Option

The Cambridge University Press logo

Beginning January 1, 2022, the library will enter into a Read and Publish contract with Cambridge University Press (CUP). Under this contract, any Georgetown University faculty, staff, or student can publish open access articles in CUP journals at no cost to themselves. With open access publishing, articles are immediately and freely available online for anyone to read, download, and share; a subscription is not required. There are many benefits to open access publishing, including:

  • Open access makes new research and scholarship freely available regardless of the reader’s location, nationality, race, age, gender, income, socio-economic circumstances, career stage, discipline, language, religion, disability, ethnicity or migratory status, or any other grounds. See It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity.
  • Without financial barriers to access, articles have a broader reach, which may lead to greater impact.
  • With greater access to articles, research, scholarship, and knowledge can advance at a more rapid pace.
  • Interdisciplinary research is enhanced and new ideas fostered when literature from many disciplines is freely available.
  • The final published version of an open access article can be uploaded to DigitalGeorgetown where it will be made openly available for researchers today and also preserved for the future.

Without this new contract, authors wanting to publish an open access article in a CUP journal would have to pay an article processing charge. These charges vary by publisher and journal, but often are prohibitively expensive for authors. CUP’s fees range from approximately $1,000 to $5,000 to publish an open access article. CUP offered this arrangement to Georgetown University through our membership in the NERL (formerly NorthEast Research Libraries) Consortium. The agreement adds no costs to the Library’s existing Cambridge University Press subscription and provides a unique opportunity for Georgetown authors to publish open access with a highly respected publisher without incurring any fees.

The contract will last for three years, and is the first such arrangement at Georgetown. If you have any questions, please contact Head of Research Services Ryan Johnson.