Open Access Initiatives

The open access (OA) movement gives both publishers and readers the power to freely promote worldwide access to information, creating a true global reach for research. DSS is proud to support USF Libraries’ open access initiatives.

Digital Commons @ USF

With more than 16 million downloads from over 200 different countries, publications on Digital Commons @ USF reach the global research community. Through Digital Commons @ USF, we publish OA textbooks, conference proceedings, graduate theses and dissertations, and more. We also host OA journals, covering a variety of subjects from English literature to military cyber affairs. Our support focuses on projects with direct links to the University of South Florida through its faculty, students, programs, centers, or institutes. As a service to the research community, USF Libraries’ commitment to true open access of scholarly information extends to authors. This means that there are no article or submission charges for OA publications hosted on or published in Digital Commons @ USF. To learn more about the open access content housed on Digital Commons @ USF, please explore our collections. To apply for conference hosting support, please see our Conference Hosting Application at https://www.lib.usf.edu/dss/conference-hosting-application/. For any other questions, please email us at digitalcommons@usf.edu.

Textbook Affordability Project

The Textbook Affordability Project (TAP) promotes awareness of textbook affordability issues and provides solutions to ensure that course materials are up-to-date and satisfy academic needs, while remaining affordable to students. TAP finds potential open access textbooks for students and faculty to freely use, and also coordinates with Digital Commons @ USF’s Open Access Textbooks collection.

Browse some of our Scholar Commons collections:


Browse our open access journals: