Open Access Funding Pilot Program

Scholarly Communications Office, Utah State University

To apply for funds, please fill out the attached form and email it to Scholarly Communications Librarian Andrew Wesolek at andrew.wesolek@usu.edu

Utah State University Libraries Pilot Program to Support Open-Access Publishing Opportunities for Faculty: Fall 2011

In the spirit of the Compact for Open-Access Publishing (COPE), Utah State University Libraries recognizes “the crucial value of the services provided by scholarly publishers, the desirability of open access to the scholarly literature, and the need for a stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide open access to their journals’ contents.” To concretely support open-access (OA) publishers that require a steady funding source to continue to provide their essential functions, the USU Libraries has committed to seeding a pilot project underwriting the reasonable journal processing fees of USU authors who choose to publish their research articles in peer-reviewed, open-access journals, or, on a case-by-case basis, openly available hybrid open-access journals.

Fully open-access journals, which make their publication fee schedule publicly available and are members of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, are helping change the landscape of scholarly communication. USU Libraries is committed to supporting this effort. Examples of open-access journals can be found in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Faculty and graduate students are encouraged to apply for these funds by emailing Scholarly Communications and Institutional Repository Librarian Andrew Wesolek at Andrew.wesolek@usu.edu. Conditions of awards include:

  • Funds will be available on a first-come-first-served basis during the pilot phase.
  • USU tenured and tenure-track faculty as well as graduate students in all disciplines are eligible to apply.
  • Funding Preference will be given to:
    • Those who are able to demonstrate matching funds from their department, college, or an outside granting agency. Without a match, full funding is not guaranteed.
    • Those who publish in fully open access journals
  • In some cases funding for hybrid open-access journals may be considered, but strictly on a case-by-case basis
  • Application for funding may be completed at the time of submission or immediately upon an article’s acceptance for publication.
  • Authors must deposit a copy of the funded article in the USU DigitalCommons.

This policy has been drafted based on the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity: http://www.oacompact.org/