The UMass Amherst Libraries have transitioned a selection of its publications to a new, online, free, open access, academic publishing platform – creating another outreach resource for UMass Amherst researchers and their work.

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As part of its commitment to open scholarship and building a community for public knowledge, UMass Amherst Libraries has migrated 11 active journals and conference proceedings to Janeway, an open online scholarly platform that covers the entire publishing process from submission to review and final publication.

Janeway is licensed under the Affero General Public License (AGPL) and was developed by the Centre for Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London, to support the goals of the Open Library of Humanities, an open access academic publisher.

The publications now available on Janeway are: communication +1; Democratic Communiqué; the Journal of Medicinally Active Plant; Portuguese Cultural Studies; Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation; Translat Library; Building Technology Educator’s Society; Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning; Society for Computation in Linguistics; Living Languages; and Best Text Collection.

“With the transition to Janeway, the UMass Amherst Libraries are poised to support the creation and dissemination of open scholarship in support of our commitment to making the work of UMass faculty and researchers more accessible for the betterment of the Commonwealth and the world,” says Nandita Mani, dean of University Libraries.

“We had the opportunity to test out Janeway during the phase one pilot of the Next Generation Library Publishing and knew that it would meet all of our needs,” says Erin Jerome, library publishing and institutional repository librarian says Erin Jerome, library publishing and institutional repository librarian.

Zach McDowell, an editor for “communication +1,” says, “This system allows for the flexibility and adaptability that we've desperately needed, offering ease of use and powerful tools to help continue our journal's success.”

“Collaborating with UMass Libraries in managing and publishing academic research has been an exceptionally positive experience for me as co-editor of ‘Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation (PARE),’”says April Zenisky, research professor and director of Computer-based Testing Initiatives for the Center for Educational Assessment at the College of Education.

Zenisky added that the UMass Amherst Libraries’ expertise, resources and dedication have greatly facilitated her own experience as editor as well vastly enhancing the reach of the journal. With the steady and knowledgeable support of the libraries, her and her team have been able to disseminate high-quality academic research that is useful to practitioners and easily accessible.

For more information, contact Jerome at ewjerome@umass.edu.