The university’s open access program started on January 1 and ends on December 31 of 2022.

Through the Research Office, the Vice-rectorate for Research and Graduate Studies of the Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO) signed an agreement with the “Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute” (MDPI), a publisher of open access scientific journals. The university’s open access program started on January 1 and ends on December 31 of 2022.

“We want to contribute in the process of democratization of knowledge. Therefore, we are trying to make the access to our research easier and this agreement will certainly be a first step towards this aim that goes in line with the international trend to share and communicate the results of our work,” said Dr. Rodrigo Navia, the director of the Vice-rectorate for Research and Graduate Studies.

Dr. Carolina Navarrete, the director of research at UFRO, worked on this agreement with Oliver Hill, the director of the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), which is based in Manchester, in the UK. “This agreement will help our researchers to make the publishing process easier. Besides, they will have access to reduced fees and to a new online payment system (SUSY). Thanks to this system, the invoices will be sent to one single recipient at UFRO, who will take care of the administrative processes for the researchers. That way, this new system will speed up the payment process, avoiding delays in the publication of articles and promoting an open access culture at our university,” she explained.

MDPI is a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access journals, based in Basel, Switzerland, with offices in China, Spain, the UK, Canada, Romania, Japan and other countries. They currently publish more than 330 journals, which are available on the open access online platform. In addition, the publisher constantly publishes new journals in response to the academic and research development around the world. All journals work with a fast and rigorous editorial and peer-review process.

The access will be open for everyone who is interested, what means that the readers are able to access the published articles from any place in the world, without paying any subscriptions. The articles that are available on the MDPI platform are for free and can be accessed immediately after their publication. That means that the researchers, students and everyone who is interested in the publications gets quick access to the latest research papers published in the journals on the MDPI platform.

The journals are indexed in the main databases and will have a large number of readers, thanks to the open access modality.

Source: Vice-rectorate for Research and Graduate Studies