Journal agreements make Western research more accessible 

Western Libraries has reached licencing deals with academic publishers so that more research is in open-access journals. Photo by Bernd Klutsch of Unsplash When professor Johanna Weststar's most recent research paper was done, reviewed, revised and accepted into her preferred academic journal, just one more question remained: open access or closed? If closed (or subscription) access, publication fees would cost her $5,000. But her decision to publish with open access was about much more than dollars-and-cents. "If you want your work to have an impact, it has to be in the world beyond the academic world," said Weststar, a professor in the DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies. "Serving our own academic communities exclusively doesn't work for me. I'd rather have my work read freely by a lot of people who might find the research useful, than by a few people behind a paywall," she said. It's also inequitable to limit scholarship and discovery - making it available only to those researchers who can afford the article processing charges and to readers who can afford the journals' paywall fees, she said.