Academic publishing has grown increasingly expensive, and libraries feel that cost directly. The database and journal subscriptions vital to research and learning regularly eat up a significant portion of library collections budgets — at the UVA Library, this meant just over 75% of a roughly $12.6 million expenditure last year. One response to this problem is open access publishing, and since 2018, the Library has operated Aperio, an open access and open educational resources publishing initiative.
Aperio is the Latin word meaning “to open,” and the model is straightforward: publishing high-quality open access journals that are freely and immediately available online or as a PDF download, with no price or permission barriers for readers. Aperio currently supports eight journals focused on fields such as linguistics, health, history, philosophy, and pedagogy. Two of these are in the start-up phase — the Journal of Christian Apocryphal Literature and Quill & Quire, an undergraduate journal of medieval studies.
The initiative’s growth isn’t limited to adding new journals. For instance, Aperio has joined the CLOCKSS Diamond Open Access preservation pilot. CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is a not-for-profit, community-governed archive dedicated to preserving scholarly publications, journals, and books for future generations. The "Diamond open access" model it supports means neither authors nor readers pay for publishing.
Research in Special Education, a journal published by Aperio since 2024, is expanding its mission as a founding member of the Open Access Special Education Alliance. The alliance describes its objective as advancing special education by uniting open-access journals into a scholarly ecosystem. RiSE has also adopted the CRediT (Contributor Role Taxonomy) system, a structured framework for describing the specific roles different contributors played in producing a piece of research. It complements traditional authorship credit by making clear who did what, rather than simply listing names.
Aperio journals are also branching out into special issues and series. Modern Philosophy’s special issue on Imperialism, Racism, and Slavery in the Modern Period, published in 2025, features nine articles on the topic. And RiSE has launched two special series, one of which has already published its first collection, with more content expected to be added over time. Articles in these series remain tied to their original volume while also being tagged as part of the special series — giving readers multiple ways to find related work.
In addition to journals, Aperio operates a book publishing program — The Public Domain Song Anthology has more than 355,000 individual song downloads — and is actively soliciting book proposals from UVA faculty, students, and staff to broaden the program. You can read more about the book program at the Aperio site.
Publishing support beyond Aperio
Beyond the Aperio press, the Library provides support for several tools for publishing open access work: the Libra platform can host a wide array of academic work (LibraETD for theses and dissertations; LibraData for datasets; and LibraOpen for articles, books, and other academic material), and makes that material discoverable in search through Virgo. Additionally, the Library works with Virginia’s library consortium to offer subsidies for open access publishing through many major journals — see the full list of publishing opportunities.
For open access teaching materials, the Library provides OER support and the Pressbooks platform, which lets instructors design and publish course materials.
Read more about publishing support, including Aperio, Libra, and much more.
