Open Access publishing: Free! or nearly free for HKU authors
The Office of Knowledge Exchange and the University Libraries have made agreements with the several publishers below, which allow HKU authors in some cases to publish in Open Access journals for free(!), and in other cases at a discount. Open Access can increase the readership of your articles, with a faster discovery rate, than can publishing articles behind a subscription wall. Increased readership can lead to increases in citations, offers of collaboration, etc. Please also explore the possibility of your grant funder paying the OA charges. The publishers:
Springer Open Choice
Our present agreement ends 28 Feb 2012. Until then, HKU authors -- corresponding author or co-authors -- accepted for publication, can publish in more than 1,000 Springer journals, and receive free Open Access publishing. To receive this, you must claim, "University of Hong Kong" from the pulldown screen, in the online submission process.
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
HKU authors who are the corresponding authors, may publish in any Public Library of Science journal with a 10% discount. To receive this discount, you must claim, "The University of Hong Kong" from a pulldown screen in the online submission process. (an example)
BioMed Central
HKU has a Supporter Membership with BioMed Central. If the affiliation of the submitting author (author who uses the BMC online submission system) is HKU, then there will be a 15% discount. Therefore if you are one of the co-authors on a paper, please check with your other co-authors to determine which of their affiliations if any, have Supporter or Prepaid Memberships with BMC. Then the co-author of the affiliation with the most BMC discount could submit the article through BMC's online submission system. BMC writes,
"When submitting a manuscript, either via a journal home page or via our online submission system, you will be identified as belonging to a member institution and automatically granted an article processing charge waiver if you are within your institution's firewall. If you are at home or at an external terminal when submitting your paper, you can still claim a waiver by starting your affiliation to your institution."
Bentham Science Publishers
HKU is a member of Betham OPEN, which allows a 30% discount for HKU corresponding authors, and any HKU co-author. To receive this 30% discount, authors must include this code in cover letters, when submitting manuscripts: "OA/2011/MI/HKU".
Directory of Open Access Journals