UVA Today features article on UVA Publishing Venture Aperio

The latest issue of UVA Today highlights the Library’s new open source publishing venture, Aperio. In the article, UVA Open Publishing Librarian Dave Ghamandi says “We’re shifting the cost to subsidizing or covering production at the beginning of the process, so the work is free, available and accessible once it’s published.” Researchers get free access to information they need and authors get the exposure they want. “This is a historical turning point for libraries,” Ghamandi explains, “from acquiring and collecting content and making it available locally to partnering with scholars to produce and widely disseminate their work.”

The expanded accessibility is not coming at the expense of peer review, however. According to Mark Saunders, director of UVA Press, “These projects will come to our editors through the same channels, go through peer review, editing, design and production.”

By eliminating subscription fees, Aperio also seeks to reduce the prohibitive costs of subscribing to journals. As it is now, Ghamandi says, “We have UVA faculty published in publications the library can’t afford. It’s stifling innovation, collaboration and creativity.”

The service also has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of textbooks to students. “What is most exciting” says Saunders, “is the opportunity afforded by Aperio to develop open educational resources – in other words, free electronic textbooks – that we plan to develop together with UVA faculty.”

Read more about Aperio in the article “UVA Library, UVA Press Partner to make Original Scholarship Freely Available” (UVA Today, 2/11/2019).

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