OhioLINK Breaks New Ground Creating Central Fund for Open Access Publications with Wiley

John Wiley and Sons, Inc. (NYSE:JWA)(NYSE:JWB) and OhioLINK, a library
consortium serving 118 libraries and 89 Ohio colleges and universities,
announced today the signing of a Wiley Open Access Account agreement. A
Wiley Open Access Account will enable OhioLINK-affiliated researchers to
use a central fund for Article Publication Charges (APC). The
partnership reflects both parties’ growing commitment to open research
and advancing scholarly communications. OhioLINK is the first North
American library consortium to centrally fund the creation and
dissemination of open access research.

Piloting the implementation of a Wiley Open Access Account across the
consortium will allow OhioLINK and its members to investigate the
consortial challenges of the transformation of the publication and
management of open access research. Members will collectively determine
the criteria and mechanisms for assigning the funds.

Judy Verses, Wiley’s Executive Vice President of Research, commented:
“We’ve had a long-standing and strong relationship with OhioLINK, and
their team has continually proven to be global pioneers in academia. It
is only through collaborative partnerships that we, as a community, are
able to push our industry forward and test new waters. We share a
fundamental belief with OhioLINK that researchers have to be at the
center of what we do.”

Gwen Evans, Executive Director of OhioLINK, added: “Our members are
deeply committed to open research and publications, but these
transformative agreements will have different implications for different
types of consortia.” Evans recently published
an article detailing the contrasting considerations required of “read”
consortia versus “publish” consortia. “As a ‘read’ consortium, this
agreement with Wiley will allow our members to begin investigating the
complexity of this funding model for open access at scale. This
experiment will allow our membership to explore the intricacies of open
access and its impact on consortia like ourselves.”

The Chair of OhioLINK’s Library Advisory Council, Carolin Sterling of
Central State University Library, embraced the initiative: “As a
membership organization with a long history of cooperation and
collaborative action, we look forward to the opportunities that this
will give us to assess open access support as a diverse group of
institutions.” Xuemao Wang, University of Cincinnati Dean of Libraries
and past chair of the Library Advisory Coordinating Committee, also
expressed support. “The experimental Wiley open access initiative will
not only create learning experiences for the OhioLINK community in
navigating consortium-based open access operational complexity, but is
also a significant step forward to cultivate an open mind set for the
greater potential of the coming bold open movement.”

Damon E. Jaggars, Vice Provost and Director of University Libraries at
The Ohio State University, added his endorsement: “Increasing the global
reach of scholarship produced by Ohio State researchers is a strategic
priority for the university and its libraries. This initiative with
Wiley is a first step in building our understanding of how a consortium
like OhioLINK might play a significant role in increasing access to
important scholarship by opening content for worldwide use in research,
teaching, and learning,” Jaggars said.

The Wiley Open Access Account includes an online dashboard for account
management and administration providing an easy to use and transparent
view of publishing activity with reporting functionality. The recently
launched consortia dashboard enables complete oversight of payment
requests through the consortia funder account; allowing a consortium to
manage payment requests from authors for their open access APCs. The
tool adds speed to the backend process which results in the speed of
research dissemination.

OhioLINK-affiliated researchers will have access to Wiley Open Access
and central funds environment beginning in the Fall of 2019.

Additional Information

About Wiley

Wiley drives the world forward with research and education. Our
scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals and our digital
learning, certification, and student-lifecycle services and solutions
help students, researchers, universities, and corporations to achieve
their goals in an ever-changing world. For more than 200 years, we have
delivered consistent performance to all of our stakeholders. The
Company's website can be accessed at www.wiley.com.

About OhioLINK

Connecting libraries, learning and discovery. Established in 1992, the
Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) is Ohio’s statewide
academic library consortium serving 118 libraries, 89 institutions of
higher education, the State Library of Ohio and more than 880,000
students, faculty, staff and researchers. Delivering both IT
infrastructure and content negotiation, OhioLINK provides access to
digital research collections rivaling top university libraries in the
United States and internationally—at a fraction of the cost. OhioLINK
also connects library services, print and digital collections among its
member institutions and manages collaborative services, including
eTutoring, statewide Affordable Learning textbook initiatives, and Open
Educational Resources. A member of the Ohio Technology Consortium of the
Ohio Department of Higher Education, OhioLINK creates a competitive
advantage for its members and supports student and researcher success in
the state of Ohio. For more information visit www.ohiolink.edu

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