16 - Piloting an Open Access Publishing Fund for Early-Career Researchers

Background: Many researchers may support the principle of Open Access (OA) but are unable to afford publishing fees for OA journals. The library set aside $25,000 of discretionary funding to explore the feasibility of aiding early-career researchers who wished to publish in OA journals. By providing this funding the library hoped to:
• Promote publishing by early-career researchers
• Enable authors to retain their copyrights
• Accelerate the online availability of peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles generated by the Institution’s researchers
• Raise campus awareness about the benefits of open access

Description: A task force consisting of the Library’s Executive Director, Associate Director for Library Computing and Technology, two Research and Education Librarians, and the Head, Collection Strategies and Management was formed to develop policy and procedures for the project. They explored OA publishing funds at other institutions, particularly at other health sciences libraries and within their library consortium.

To increase the impact of limited resources, the task force decided to only fund:
• Early-career researchers, defined as students, postdocs, and faculty at the rank of Assistant Professor or lower.
• 50% of article processing charges up to a maximum of $3000.

A strict definition of which OA journals were eligible was developed to avoid supporting publishing in predatory journals.

The Head, Collection Strategies and Management was designated to administer the pilot, and the Research and Education Librarians advertised the new program.

Conclusion: The OA publishing fund pilot project has been a great success and was extended for a second year. To date 44 applications have been submitted, with 37 accepted and $39,341 dollars spent. Rejections were primarily because the journals selected were hybrid and not entirely OA. If a source of stable funding is found the program will be continued and expanded. Since there is a surge in applications with each round of publicity, a method of continuous and targeted marketing of the fund should be devised. Further promotion of and education about OA publishing in general may also increase early-career researchers’ use of the program.