University of Victoria
AC-11: Open Access to Research

UVicSpace is an open access learning and research repository for published and unpublished digital scholarly works by the UVic community and its partners. UVic faculty and researchers can email a list of their publications (or their CV containing the list) or any items they would like added to UVicSpace to dsphelp@uvic.ca.

Students are strongly encouraged to publish their scholarly works in UVicSpace upon completion, as are Librarians, archivists, PEA staff and Faculty of Education scholars. The UVic Librarians Statement of Commitment (2012) directly encourages all Librarians, archivists and PEA staff to commit to “…making the best possible effort to publish in venues providing unrestricted public access to their works”, including endeavoring to secure the right to self-archive their published materials and deposit them in UVicSpace. The Faculty of Education has further adopted the Open Access Policy as of December, 2019, which “…signals a commitment by the Faculty to support and encourage scholars electing to publish their work in open access journals, or seeking permission to deposit published scholarly outputs in UVicSpace.”

For the full Librarians Statement of Commitment, see: https://www.uvic.ca/library/featured/scholcomm/policy/uviclibrarians.php

For the Faculty of Education Open Access Policy, see: https://www.uvic.ca/education/assets/docs/openaccesspolicy_dec52019.pdf

While the University of Victoria does not provide APC funds or have a central APC fund on campus, the Office of Research Services does have a Book and Creative Subvention Fund to support books published by faculty members that may be published under an open access license. Additionally, there is an Open Education Resources Grant at a value of up to $5,000 available per awardee to produce open education resources. Finally, the UVic library supports open access through publisher memberships and licence agreements which entitles authors to publish in a number of peer-reviewed journals by paying a discounted fee for author/article processing charges (APCs) when the self-identify as being affiliated with UVic.

For more information, see: https://www.uvic.ca/library/featured/scholcomm/policy/funding.php

The University of Victoria provides an online journal hosting service using the Open Journal System (OJS) software. If a member of UVic is interested in using the OJS system and UVic’s hosting service for publishing their online journal, they are encouraged to contact the Scholarly Communications Librarian or the UVic Libraries ePublishing Services. There are currently 38 journals hosted on this service.

For more information see: https://journals.uvic.ca/

The UVic Libraries ePublishing Services are a group of dedicated staff that provide publishing support at a reduced cost. The program was established in 2007 and serves to extend the reach and reputation of the university through the publication of scholarly, artistic, and educational books and journals that advance learning and knowledge. Primarily a digital open access publishing program, it aims to explore new modes of scholarly publishing, while making works available simultaneously in print and digital formats, for a varied audience. The program works with scholars and researchers to enable success in scholarly publishing.

For more information, see: https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/press/

The University of Victoria does not have a formal policy which requires its employees to publish their scholarly works open access or archive final post-peer reviewed versions of scholarly works in an open access repository. However, the UVic Librarians Statement of Commitment outlines the pledge librarians, archivists and PEA staff at UVic have taken on in applying their best possible effort to publish in venues providing unrestricted public access to their works.

To view the entire commitment, please see: https://www.uvic.ca/library/featured/scholcomm/policy/uviclibrarians.php