UTA Libraries Mavs Open Press creates and increases pathways to open scholarship and open education for the diverse UTA community. Mavs Open Press lowers barriers to open publishing by offering no-cost services for scholars, educational professionals, and students from diverse backgrounds. Mavs Open Press supports the publication ofOpen Educational Resources andOpen Access Journals & Books.
Mavs Open Press offers publishing services for new and remixed open educational resources (OER) authored by UTA faculty and students. OER from ourcollectionare hosted on Pressbooks and made available to readers in various digital formats free of charge.
OER Department Services
- Offering access to easy-to-use toolsincluding Pressbooks, H5P, and Hypothes.is, as well as training and technical support
- Consulting on copyright questions
- Obtaining an ISBN
- Providing multiple access options, including web-based, PDF, EPUB, and print
- Maximizing discoverability of your book through robust metadata and indexing
- Preserving and archiving the digital content in perpetuity
- Learn more aboutOER Department services
Pressbooks
UTA Libraries provide no-cost access to Pressbooks for UTA faculty, staff, and students interested in creating or modifying OER. Pressbooks is an open-source web-based publishing tool that allows authors to easily import content and export the resulting publication to a variety of formats, including EPUB, PDF, and Common Cartridge for insertion into Canvas. Our publications allow embedded multimedia, interactive activities and assessment with automatic feedback, and optional grade integration with Canvas. To begin using Pressbooks,request a user accountand contact the OER Department for further assistance.
Mavs Open Press offers no-cost services for scholars who wish to publish a new open-access journal or for those who would like to convert an existing print journal that has traditional copyright.We canalso help you publish your book in open access, digital format, whether it's a scholarly monograph discussing high-level research or a less formal work that focuses on teaching practice or other topics.
We publish open access journals and books on a variety of topics including the sociology of economics, critical cultural studies, medical humanities, and more! We ensure all content is offered open access with Creative Commons licenses, so that authors retain their rights and users/readers know expectations of use. Book projects can include our specialized OER services, research volumes, conference proceedings, reports, or less formal works.
UTA Published Open Access Journals
We have been collaborating with scholars to publish open-access journals for since 2017. Check out the full collection ofUTA published open access journals.
We provide technical publishing support through the submission, peer-review, editing, and final publication process. Our journal publishing services include:
- Obtaining an ISSN or ISBN and permanent identifiers (DOIs)
- Assisting with all aspects of technical setup and production, including in some cases layout and copyediting (when funding is available)
- Ensuring all publications are as accessible as possible for all readers
- Providing a publishing platform that simplifies and automates the peer-review process and includes options for blind or double-blind review
- Hosting open access digital content on a secure server with frequent backups and built-in redundancies
- Consulting on copyright, Creative Commons, and intellectual property questions
- Maximizing discoverability of your publication through search-engine optimization and robust metadata
- Preserving and archiving publication content in perpetuity
Publishing your first OA journal will go more smoothly if you have a strong sense of your readiness. Here are some questions to think about as you assess how prepared you may be to start a new journal or to transfer anexistingone to theMavsOpen Press:
- Do you plan to establish a peer-reviewed journal or editor-reviewed?
- Do you have staff predesignated to serve as journal managers, reviewers,copyeditors, and layout editors? SeeBest Practices in Peer Review Handbookfrom theAssociation of American University Presses.
- If you are moving from subscription-basedprint to open access digital publishing, do you have a plan for communicating the changes to your subscribers?
- How familiar are you withjournal publishing? If you are new to it, you will need to allow extra time to become familiar with managing the review process.
The more complex your setup, the more planning and time you will need to invest. Contact librariesops@uta.edu to discuss the open access journal opportunities with UTA Libraries Mavs Open Press!
The UTA Libraries provides human and technological resources that empower our communities to create or adapt open access materials. Most Mavs Open Press publications are openly licensed using Creative Commons licenses to allow for revision and reuse.
Mavs Open Press proudly serves UTA, one of the most diverse universities in the US, a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and an AAPI/Pacific Islander Serving Institution. Mavs Open Press is committed to supporting and increasing the diversity of voices in academic publishing, as well as diversifying the types of materials valued in academia. We prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, and access as well as reparative justice to work against the historical and systemic structures that influence academia and our partners. Our strong commitment to open access publishing removes barriers that students and scholars from marginalized backgrounds face in achieving academic goals and builds many different accessible pathways for as many people as possible to access materials produced by Mavs Open Press.
UTA Libraries Mavs Open Press is a member of theLibrary Publishing Coalition, whose mission is to "promotethe development of innovative, sustainable publishing services in academic and research libraries to support scholars as they create, advance, and disseminate knowledge."
Plan of Action:
- Actively recruit and prioritize authors from diverse backgrounds to publish with Mavs Open Press
- Support and increase open access publications in languages other than English
- Promote Mavs Open Press publications to diverse audiences including UTA alumni, K-12 partners, and broader surrounding communities
- Encourage inclusivity and diversity in the composition of authorial and editorial teams as well as staff who support publication
- Apply reparative metadata practices to Mavs Open Press publications to enhance access to materials inclusive of diverse experiences and voices
- Continue to improve the accessible options for engagement with all publications of Mavs Open Press
- Evaluate and transition to updated and highly effective publishing platforms
- Document and increase transparency of our policies and workflows
- Commit to membership and engagement in Libraries and other professional organizations prioritizing open access and its relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Increase our efforts to advocate and build awareness of the benefits of open access
