Sunday, May 18, 2008

Berkeley to Pay Authors’ Open-Access Charges

The May 2008 SPARC enews reports on a very welcome new initiative by the U. of California, Berkeley to provide grants to its faculty and students to pay author and related charges for publication in open access journals:

It’s one thing to say you support open-access publishing. It’s another to provide authors with a pot of money to actually pay for it.

That’s what’s happening at the University of California Berkeley. In January, the university launched the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative, a pilot program co-sponsored by the University Librarian and the Vice Chancellor for Research to cover publication charges for open-access journals.

Faculty, post-doc and graduate students can apply for up to $3,000 to cover the cost of publishing an article in an open-access publication. The fund also gives up to $1,500 for the cost of so-called hybrid publications’ paid access fees, where information is freely available but the journal limits the right to redistribute. The pilot program will last 18 months or until the initial $125,000 fund runs out. The hope – and challenge – is to find a permanent funding source.

The article continues with further details about Berkeley's plan as well as information about the U. of North Carolina, Chapel-Hill and the U. of Wisconsin-Madison which have also established funds to pay for open-access research.

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