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Open Access Publishing Support Fund

Grants are available from the UO Libraries for UO researchers to help cover costs of publishing in open access journals.

The University of Oregon Libraries are committed to supporting our faculty and researchers in the rapidly changing scholarly publication process and to maximizing the visibility and impact of research produced at the University of Oregon.  One very important way to achieve high impact for your publications is to publish in an open access online journal.  Such journals make your work available to other scholars and the public free of charge, and typically are much more broadly accessible to an international audience than journals that require an individual or library subscription, particularly in the current era of uncertainty in library budgets and serials cancellations. Numerous studies find that publications in such journals tend to be read and cited more than similar publications in traditional journals.  The effect is not unnoticed among funding agencies, which are increasingly requiring that research they fund be made available by open access, either through OA journals or by "green OA" i.e. deposit in an institutional or disciplinary repository.

There are currently more than 5,500 open access journal titles listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.  Many of these have a business model where authors pay a fee when their article is accepted for publication, thought no charge is made for readers.

UO authors:

Submit your request for funding by
filling out an application form now.

The Libraries have established a  program to cover a portion of the cost of author fees for submissions to such OA journals, with funding for the  project made available by the Provost.  The pilot phase of the project ran from spring 2009 through summer 2010.  Subject to availability of funding the project will continue at least through spring 2012.

Goals

The overall goal of this program is to remove barriers that prevent researchers from publishing in open access journals.  In this grant program we focus on author fees for publication in established open access peer-reviewed journals.

Additional specific goals of the pilot project include raising the visibility of open access publishing options among UO authors, increasing the number of UO authors submitting to open access journals, and collecting data that can be used to measure effectiveness and fiscal impacts of new models of support for faculty research.  An important long-term goal of this program is to support open access journals.  Patronizing such journals not only benefits the individual author and potential readers, but offers leverage for more radical change in patterns of scholarly communications that could address the current "crisis" of spiraling serials costs.

Eligibility and funding guidelines

Authors who satisfy all of the following are encouraged to apply for funding:

  • Applicant must be a UO tenure-related faculty member, non-tenure-related career faculty member (including ranked officers of instruction, research, or administration), post-doc, or currently enrolled graduate student ready to submit a completed article for publication.
  • Applicant must be listed as one of the authors, and article must indicate UO affiliation.
  • Manuscript must be a peer-reviewed scholarly article or monograph (including original research, review articles, etc.) to be published after 1 April 2009.  Applications may be submitted starting immediately, and will continue to be accepted subject to availability of funds.
  • Funding is available for peer reviewed publication in open access scholarly journals that charge a publication fee.  Funding is also available for peer reviewed scholarly monographs.  Articles must be made freely available on the web at the time of initial publication (no embargo periods).  At this time funding is not available for articles published using an "open choice" option in journals that are primarily subscription based rather than open access.
  • Journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/doaj) are assumed to qualify. For publication in a journal not listed there, additional information to allow assessment of whether the journal meets our criteria (see "Determining if a journal qualifies for funding" below) may be required as part of the application process.
  • Authors with more than one article may apply for funds more than once but should submit separate applications.

Funding support will cover the following portions of an author's publication fee:

  • Up to 100% of author fee for publishing a peer-reviewed manuscript in an open access journal. 
  • Maximum reimbursement will be $1,000 per article.
  • Maximum reimbursement will be $3,000 per person over the period of this project.
  • Reimbursement will cover only direct costs for open access publication (not the cost of reprints, color illustration fees, non-OA page charges, web hosting for self-archiving, etc.).
  • Reimbursement will be available only in cases where the authors do not have adequate grant or contract funding designated to cover author fees.  Authors with funding designated to cover publication costs such as author fees from grants, contracts, or other institutional funds are asked to use those funds first and to allow others to share in the benefit of open publications.

Funding process

If you have questions about whether a particular journal qualifies for funding or about any details of the process, contact JQ Johnson, Scholarly Communications and Instructional Support or Dean Walton, Science Librarian.  Note that the details of procedures and criteria may change during the course of the project.

  1. Fill out an online application form, typically at the time of initial journal submission or when the article is accepted pending revisions.
  2. Applications will be reviewed by the library's Director of Scholarly Communications, in conjunction with the library's Scholarly Communications Initiative Group.  A decision for funding support will normally be communicated to the author within two weeks.
  3. If the funding request is approved, author should notify the library when the article is accepted for publication or if the author withdraws it from consideration in that journal.
  4. Reimbursement will be made once the article has been accepted for publication and the author has been invoiced for the submission fee.  Authors must provide a copy of the publisher's invoice to the library.  Author should also provide a full bibliographic citation plus a copy of the funded article, either author's final version or the published version, for deposit in Scholars' Bank, and will be asked to complete a brief survey on experience and attitudes towards open access publishing.
  5. Payment will normally be in the form of a reimbursement through a departmental fund transfer.  If author has paid the publisher (e.g. by personal credit card), the author will be reimbursed upon submission of proof of payment.

This grant program began as a pilot project during spring 2009, became a standard library service in fall 2010, and is expected to continue at least through spring 2012.  It is likely that the details of implementation and the criteria for funding will change during the lifetime of the project, so check back on this page when you are ready to publish your open access manuscript.

Determining if a journal qualifies for funding

Journal publication policies are highly varied, and it is sometimes difficult to determine if a particular journal qualifies as "open access."  For the purposes of this grant program, all journals that are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals are assumed to qualify.  Other journals that meet DOAJ's criteria are also acceptable, but the author should submit as part of this application process suitable documentation to allow verification that the journal meets the criteria.

Funding is available for peer reviewed scholarly monographs published as part of an established open access monograph series even though the series is not strictly speaking a periodical, as long as the other DOAJ criteria are met.

Occasionally a journal's policies will fail to meet DOAJ's formal criteria for a minor technical reason.  For example, some publishers routinely release all articles in the journal for open access after a short (up to 12 month) embargo, but charge authors an open access publishing fee for immediate open access.  Others may allow unlimited open access for noncommercial purposes but restrict commercial copying and reuse.  Still others may release all scholarly research articles as open access but restrict access to book reviews or some other class of work.  Such situations will be considered on a case by case basis based on the overall goals of this project, but will be funded at a lower priority than journals that clearly meet all of the DOAJ criteria.

In general, funding will not be available for non-peer-reviewed publication, nor for publication in a journal that is primarily subscription based but that allows open access to a small fraction of scholarly articles based on payment of an author fee.

Acknowledgements and references

The UO program is largely based on the "BRII" program at the University of California, Berkeley.  Additional suggestions came from similar programs at the University of Wisconsin, UNC Chapel Hill, and Lund University in Sweden.

Funding for the OAPS pilot program was provided by the Provost.  The implementation and the funding guidelines described on this page were shaped by discussions with and approved by the University Library Committee.

For an extensive discussion of open access publishing and the crisis in scholarly communications, see for example
For discussion of some of the UO Library context that emphasizes the urgency of scholarly communications reform, see

Maintained by: JQ Johnson, jqj@uoregon.edu
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