The Lehigh University Libraries are very excited to announce a new, three-year pilot Open Access (OA) agreement with Wiley that will allow Lehigh-affiliated responsible corresponding authors to publish their research openly in Wiley journals. This “Read and Publish” agreement maintains subscription access to all journals currently published by Wiley.

More information about the agreement, including instructions for authors, can be found in this guide.

Wiley, a leading scholarly publisher, was selected as a partner for this pilot for multiple reasons. Wiley publishes journals encompassing a wide range of disciplines, with past Lehigh authors representing multiple Colleges and academic departments. Over the last five years, Wiley also worked with the Lehigh Libraries to significantly reduce the overall cost of subscription access to the journals they publish, making that component of this agreement more sustainable. Importantly, this agreement is cost-neutral, does not lead to high ongoing costs to cover Open Access publishing, and does not involve payments for Article Publication Charges (APCs). The cost for APCs, the payments made to make individual articles Open Access, have increased at unsustainable levels, mirroring the unsustainable cost increases for subscription access to journals (see reference to APC costs in a recent Ivy Plus announcement).

Boaz Nadav-Manes, Lehigh’s University Librarian, says: “I am very proud of our Collections Development Executive Committee and colleagues for successfully negotiating a seamless way for Lehigh’s authors to publish their research in an accessible and open venue via Wiley. Such pilot deals lay a foundation for a healthier and more open scholarly exchange and may transform how our community openly accesses and shares knowledge.” 

This pilot agreement will be a learning experience for the Libraries in assessing opportunities for partnering to make Lehigh’s research publications more accessible to everyone. Similar to the Libraries’ first pilot Open Access agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), this agreement will be used as an assessment tool and an avenue for discussion around Open Access publishing. The Libraries understand the limitations of these types of agreements, both from a cost sustainability and equitability standpoint, and plan to take a holistic approach to support a more sustainable, open, and equitable scholarly publishing ecosystem. More information on the Libraries’ strategy for support of Open Access publishing can be found in this policy statement.

If you want to learn more about this specific agreement or have feedback, please email Phillip Hewitt, Senior Engineering Librarian, and the Libraries’ Collections Strategist, at pjh315@lehigh.edu. Phillip and Jasmine Woodson, Assistant Director, Instruction & Outreach and Education Librarian, will also be holding open Zoom meetings to answer any questions on Tuesday, April 18th and Wednesday, April 19th  from 10 - 11 a.m. The Zoom URL is: https://lehigh.zoom.us/j/95219377411?pwd=WS9GMmprdHMzVkNtWjJPb0ZkWGJFdz09

Additionally, if you have published an article and would like to make your accepted manuscript openly available on The Lehigh Preserve, please email your librarian for a consultation.

Learn more about the Lehigh University Libraries commitment to “Open”:

  • Public access to research - The Lehigh Preserve is the University’s institutional repository, serving as an accessible archive of theses, dissertations, archival Lehigh research reports, and additional types of research output. The Lehigh Preserve received 55,224 visitors during the academic year 2021-2022, who downloaded Lehigh research 169,544 times.
  • Open source systems - following Lehigh’s Sustainability Strategic Plan 2030 (Research Goal 11) - the Libraries co-develop open infrastructure supporting research and learning. Examples of the Libraries’ commitment include leadership around the FOLIO open source library management system, the Project ReShare resource sharing system, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)-funded Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP).
  • Partnerships - The Libraries support public access to scholarship and open systems through partnerships with and memberships in national and international organizations. Some examples include the Libraries’ support of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition (SPARC), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the arXiv preprint repository.