Open at Penn State
Penn State's open scholarship initiatives are crucial to the advancement of affordable and equitable access to information. In a concerted effort to drive innovation and engage students, the University Libraries and its partners across Penn State collaborate to reduce barriers to the use and sharing of knowledge.
Open Access
Open access removes access barriers for readers. A publication is open access if it is available on the internet without a paywall. This freely available copy may be on the publisher’s website or in a repository. Repositories can be for entire disciplines (e.g., arXiv), for a particular institution (e.g., ScholarSphere), or for research outputs from a particular funder (e.g., PubMed Central). Some open access materials also have open licenses on them, allowing users to copy, redistribute, and adapt the works.
In 2020, Penn State adopted an open access policy for scholarly articles.
The University Libraries' Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright leads the Libraries’ technical implementation of the university open access policy and supports university researchers by offering workshops and consultations about open access, copyright, publishing agreements, funder requirements, and related topics.
For more information, see this Open Access guide or contact the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright at openaccess@psu.edu.
Open Education
Open Education at Penn State encompasses the resources, tools, and practices that can be fully utilized, shared, and adapted in a digital environment. Open Education includes things like Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Pedagogy, and Open Practices.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are no-cost learning and training materials created to be freely used, shared, and adapted in a digital environment. Open Pedagogy includes, at a basic level, teaching with OER and embracing open educational practices in the classroom.
In addition to its support for Open Educational Resources, Penn State supports instructors in adopting low-cost course materials. Such materials have the affordability benefits of OER even though they cannot necessarily be freely shared and adapted.
Open Education support is offered in the following areas:
- Assessment and discovery of OER
- Adopting or adapting existing OER into a Penn State course
- Creating and publishing new OER
- Creative Commons Licensing
Contact the Open Education Resources Team at oer@psu.libanswers.com.
Open Publishing
University Libraries' Open Publishing program facilitates the production of open access scholarly journals, bibliographies, monographs, and conference proceedings.
As the Penn State University Libraries' Open Access imprint, Open Publishing makes all publications freely available to view online and download, and authors are never charged a processing fee. All copyrights are retained by the individual authors, journals, or sponsoring entity, and most publications are licensed for use under a Creative Commons license.
Journal managers, Editors-in-Chief, and authors are provided with a variety of support based on their needs. Some of the core services include:
- Journal setup and support
- ISSN and DOI registration
- Guidance on abstracting/indexing/discovery services
- Preservation of publication material
- PR and Marketing assistance for publications
Contact the Open Publishing Team at openpublishing@psu.edu.
PSU Press Unlocked
Unlocked is the Press’ open access initiative, aligned with the Press’ mission to promote and advance scholarship through the dissemination of knowledge as widely as possible.
The humanities and social sciences titles found here continue our 60-plus-year commitment to disseminating learned, relevant, first-class scholarly publications as widely as possible. Unlocked books are published in partnership with multiple platforms, including Ubiquity Press, Knowledge Unlatched, and JSTOR. Physical editions are available for purchase in print-on-demand format directly from PSU Press or through your favorite bookseller.
Learn more about the program and see all Unlocked books and articles of the PSU Press.
Open Research Data
Open Research Data refers to data that are openly published and can be freely accessed and reused. Sharing data openly lowers barriers to accessing research outputs, enabling the verification of research findings and fostering the longevity and reusability of the scholarly record. By making data openly available, researchers also help drive innovation and allow others to build upon past research.
Many publishers require and major research funders strongly encourage data sharing alongside published manuscripts. Learn more about funder data management and sharing requirements.
The University Libraries' Research Informatics and Publishing Department support researchers with a wide range of data services, including:
- Data management
- Geospatial Mapping and Analysis
- Statistical Analysis and Interpretation
- Data Sharing and Preservation
The University Libraries’ also hosts an institutional repository and archive, ScholarSphere, for sharing and preserving Penn State’s scholarly and research outputs. ScholarSphere can be used to openly share and preserve publications, research data, and creative works. Learn more about ScholarSphere and deposit requirements.
For more information or assistance, contact the Research Informatics and Publishing Department at repub@psu.edu.
Open Source Software
Releasing research software under open-source licenses amplifies its impact and ensures replicability. Beyond supporting the sharing of research software, the University Libraries actively contribute to the open-source community through key initiatives such as our open repository, our public website platform, and various collaborative research projects.
ScholarSphere, our digital repository for publications, data and presentations, is built on software developed here and is used worldwide. Additionally, various other digital tools developed by Libraries Strategic Technologies are shared publicly via open licenses.
We also leverage a variety of open-source software tools to support our services and publications, including our public website, catalog, and open publications. These systems use widely adopted open-source platforms such as Drupal and Open Journal Systems. The University Libraries’ GitHub organization (psu-libraries), serves as a hub for sharing these resources.
University Libraries offers several services related to open-source software, including:
- Sharing research software (repositories, documentation, GitHub, etc.): Contact repub@psu.edu.
- Open source software licensing: Contact the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright at copyright@psu.edu.