Category Archives: Publishing

While the growth of more and more digital resources has enabled further dissemination of education and scholarly content, it is also true that not all digital content is the same in terms of its ability to be read by all users. Sometimes, choices as simple as background color or font contrast can be the difference between an excellent promotional tool and unusable material, simply because of the way it interacts with different accessibility tools. Additionally, as technology advances and content is delivered in wildly different and creative ways, it is also crucial to think about how those technologies fit in to a scholarly landscape where screen-readers and adaptive technologies are able to make content clear to a user who may not be to consume knowledge in the way it was originally designed.

Recently, The United States Department of Justice added formal language that speaks to the requirement of accessible sites for all publicly funded sites. The mandate sets a deadline of April 24, 2026 for all public entities with a population of over 50,000 – and sets an extended deadline for those entities under 50,000 – for April 26, 2027. For many state-run public institutions, this could mean a fairly rapid transition to accessible web-apps and content delivery within the next year and a half. While there will certainly be fits and starts and pain-points along the way, much of the mandated changes are necessary requirements – familiar to many web developers, librarians, or content managers as best practices. And while many aspired to maintain websites that maintained accessibility standards, this mandate ups the urgency for many institutions – who will have to ensure their digital content is in accordance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (WCAG 2.2)

While these changes will likely be difficult to implement, many accessibility advocates understand this as an important mandate that will allow many users to gain access to information it could have been impossible to access prior to necessary changes. Indeed, it seems all but inevitable that major institutions will have to set aside resources and staff to re-working websites and platforms to ensure that they are accessible up to a standard. And while this may seem like a tremendous burden, the reality is that it is the least institutions can do to effectively deliver content to everyone regardless of a given users needs, and hard work in getting content accessible now will create many more equitable spaces going forward.

If this mandate will be rescinded or modified in the coming years may be hard to predict, but the reality will remain for authors and content creators that accessibility helps everyone access content, which should be a basic goal of publishing anything. Scholarly Platforms & Discovery Services have recently put together a short guide for Making your PDF Accessible. Please also be sure to see our Libguides on Accessibility best practices.

Boston College’s portfolio of journals spans across disciplines – some are produced quarterly or semesterly by undergraduate students, others may publish once a year with editorial staff comprising of BC faculty and other experts. Overall, there are a number of publications with different purposes, audiences, and editorial processes.

Followers of this newsletter likely know about the portfolio of work that exists on Open Journal Systems, the libraries primary platform for ejournal publication. Recently, however, International Higher Education moved their ejournal to a site called PubPub. While this platform is relatively new, it offers a tremendous amount of flexibility during the editorial process – with consistent version control that allows multiple editors to look over a document at the same time. PubPub, developed by Knowledge Futures, is an open source publishing platform. International Higher Education is currently using PubPub to publish their ejournal online and mint DOIs for their articles.

Unlike many other journal publishers, PubPub aims to be a platform for a wide variety of needs. Additionally, as they move toward rolling out a new open source product called “PubPub Platform” it is clear their intention is to provide space for a wide variety of formats:

While Boston College Libraries does not have an explicit relationship with PubPub, we have had tremendous success in working with them to ensure that International Higher Education has a stable and readily accessible home that also preserves the journal’s modern look and feel. IHE has recently published their 122nd issue! While users interact with the journal on the PubPub site, another copy of the journal is also uploaded to Open Journal Systems, which maintains industry standard LOCKKS preservation. By utilizing both publishing platforms, IHE is able to meet the needs of their users while also ensuring the safety and sustainability that comes along with preserving the journal properly.

If you have any questions about using PubPub for a collection or publication, reach out to Scholarly Platforms & Discovery Services.

With the end of 2024, some federal agencies released updates to policy in guidance providing more details on their implementation of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Nelson Memo that requires articles based on federal grants to be made available to the public without cost or embargo. The Department of Energy has created a useful tracker for many agency plans.

National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health released a new Public Access Policy in December. The new policy requires researchers funded by NIH grants to make the accepted manuscript of a published article available immediately upon publication, eliminating the currently-allowed 12 month embargo. The new policy takes effect for any article submissions accepted after December 31, 2025. This policy was developed in response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy “Nelson” Memo from 2022, which directed all research funding agencies to make funded research immediately available. 

One of the biggest issues around the new policy is the question of cost. NIH asserts that complying with the policy costs researchers nothing, as researchers only have to submit their manuscripts to the government, which is free. Also, no specific licensing requirement is needed – the NIH emphasizes that this is public access, not open access. Compliance may technically be free, but researchers could still face costs. Some publishers do not currently allow articles to be made available without the payment of an article processing charge. Some of these charges are allowable to be covered by grants funds. The NIH will not cover charges from publishers solely to comply with the new policy. Journals must treat all articles the same. The NIH also did not put a specific dollar amount as to what a ‘reasonable’ cost was.

This policy change has been in the works for a while, but was notably announced weeks before a new administration starts. This was released as a “Policy” and not as a regulation; however, it could still be eligible to be rescinded by Congress via the Congressional Review Act, if the Government Accountability Office deems it qualifies as a rule. There is also a question of what happens to the OSTP memo when the new administration takes office.

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation also put its changes in guidance form, including the new language in its Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide. The guide reiterates the point that submitting to the NSF system is free, but that grant recipients can use awards to pay publishers to allow making the Version of Record available, a long way of saying that awards can be used for Article Processing Charges.