EBSCO sells its databases on a subscription model, primarily to libraries and educational institutions. Inclusion of your journal in one or more of these databases can help readers find your journal content. EBSCO asks journals to sign a licensing agreement giving permission for EBSCO to index their content. For open access journals, EBSCO will then harvest content from the open web. For toll access journals, EBSCO will arrange with the journal to receive the content for indexing. EBSCO pays royalties to the journals it indexes (regardless of the journal's open access status).

Several journals in Penn State's Open Publishing program are indexed by EBSCO under such an arrangement. Open Publishing journals considering entering an indexing agreement with EBSCO should ensure that they have the rights necessary to sign an agreement with EBSCO (based on their agreements with article authors) and that the agreement with EBSCO will not prevent them from continuing to publish on an open access basis. EBSCO is accustomed to working with open access journals, so this should be feasible. The Open Publishing program cannot give legal advice to journals about agreements with EBSCO.

For EBSCO's current policies related to publishers of indexed content, visit their Publisher Support site. For information on other indexes and aggregators, visit Michigan Publishing's Overview of Journal Indexes and Aggregators.