SAGE Publishing announces the launch of a new portal that enables authors, consortia, libraries, and funders to manage the open access publishing workflow. Named the SAGE Open Access Portal, the platform currently supports SAGE Choice, the publisher’s hybrid Open Access (OA) publishing option, for 900+ journals. Later in 2020, it will be extended to support SAGE’s 180+ pure Gold OA journals.
To meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders, the Portal:
- Enables automated compliance with all funder or national OA mandates
- Enables stakeholders to view and track articles through approval, license selection, and payment transaction
- Includes a shared author and bill payer interface to streamline Article Processing Charge (APC) payment processes
- Provides detailed reporting through dashboard views and downloadable reports
- Automatically notifies authors of articles eligible for OA publishing agreements and any waivers or discounts for which they are eligible
“We believe in paving the way to a more open future, and as an independent publisher, are able to make long-term investments in tools that meet the wide variety of needs of the OA community,” comments David Ross, Vice President of Open Research at SAGE Publishing. “The SAGE Open Access Portal eases the process for authors and enables libraries, consortia, and funders to better support authors as well. Instead of simply bolting the Portal’s offerings onto our existing author services, we recognized that a standalone platform would address the complexities of the OA publishing process and ensure a more individualized experience for each user.”
SAGE was an early driver of OA publishing: the company was a founding board member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association; one of two publishing partners in the European Commission-funded FP7 Framework project on the Study of Open Access Publishing; and launched the first broad-spectrum OA journal aimed specifically at the Social and Behavioral Sciences, SAGE Open. SAGE has already engaged with several national consortia to facilitate the transition to open access and expect to extend these in the foreseeable future. In 2020 SAGE is also piloting an institutional level agreement with the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
