Publication Rights

Puzzling over a publishing contract or license agreement?  Concerned about losing the ability to share your article with a class or reuse graphics in a future presentation or paper? Your liaison librarian can help you make sense of a publishing agreement, identify rights that you might want to retain, communicate with the publisher, and explore other ways to protect your rights in your own scholarship.  

Copyright Resources

Our Copyright Guide provides information about the rights of scholars in using and creating scholarly work. For more support or specific questions, contact our scholarly communications team.

Open Access refers to material that is digital, online, free of charge, and free from most (or all) restrictions on how it is used. Our Open Access services help GVSU faculty, students, and other creators share their intellectual and creative work widely, without paywalls or other restrictions on who can see, use, and benefit from that work.

Publication Costs

Many open access journals ask authors to contribute to the cost of publishing, in order to make articles freely available to readers and researchers everywhere. Grants from the Libraries' Open Access Publishing Support Fund help faculty cover open access publication fees. 

Evaluating Journals

With new journals appearing in every discipline every year, all eagerly soliciting articles, it can be hard to decide where to submit research. When you encounter an unfamiliar publication, our Open Access Journal Quality Indicators offer a framework to help you assess the journal’s quality, value, and practices.

Hosting Publications

ScholarWorks also provides user-friendly tools for creating, updating, and managing peer review in open access journals and open access textbooks. To learn how our services can empower you to start your own journal, share open education resources, and even organize conferences, contact the Libraries’ Publishing Services Manager.

Showcasing Your Scholarship

ScholarWorks@GVSU, the university's open access repository, can help you share unpublished research or creative work, self-archive copies of your published articles, and provide access to data, videos, presentation slides, and other scholarship. To learn more about how ScholarWorks can increase the reach and impact of your scholarship, email the Scholarly Communications Team.

What can I share?

Many academic publishers allow authors to share a version of their article or book chapter in an open access repository like ScholarWorks. Send us your CV, and we'll investigate which of your works can be openly shared online, and in what format.