Faculty Research Support

Open access is the "free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment" (SPARC). Open access can be attained via two primary paths: publishing in an open access journal (Gold open access) or retaining the author's copyright and posting a copy of the article to an institutional repository or subject repository (Green open access). 

The benefits of open access include: 

• Greater visibility and retrievability of research
• Increased impact of scholarship
• Boosts the likelihood that results will be taken up, extended, applied, and cited
• Increased readership outside the academy, including policy makers, journalists, non-profits, the general public, etc. 

Open Access Publishing Agreements

Some of our journal subscriptions allow you to publish open access without paying author processing charges. We currently have open access publishing agreements with: 

• American Chemical Society
• Cambridge University Press
• Elsevier

It's easy to take advantage of these agreements when publishing in any journal published by these publishers. Just use your Sonoma State email address when completing the author submission process as the submitting or corresponding author. 

The library provides numerous ways to publish or showcase your research. We want to work with you to make your work accessible and discoverable. 

• ScholarWorks is the CSU's digital repository, designed to preserve and make publicly available the research, creative works, and output of SSU faculty, staff, and students. Putting your work in ScholarWorks is a great way to make it accessible to readers and other researchers and to comply with funder public research mandates at no cost to you. 
• We make an effort to add all faculty publications to our collection. If you have a recent publication you'd like the library to acquire, contact the Collection Development Librarian. 
• We regularly create displays to highlight faculty research. We'd love to work with you to showcase your work and your research process. Contact the Collection Development Librarian to talk about possibilities. 

Are you working with a research assistant? Did you know research assistants can check items out of the library on your behalf? All you have to do is set up a proxy borrower. Fill out the form to let us know that you want someone to be able to check items out on your account. 

You are responsible for any items that your proxy borrower checks out on your account.