Campus-based Open-access Publishing Funds

Some commercial academic journal publishers will allow open access to articles if the author pays a fee up front. SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is urging academic institutions to support the creation of special funds for paying such fees. Understandably, this approach raises a number of questions which SPARC attempts to answer.

For example:

For administrators:
1. Why might my institution start an open-access fund?
2. How do faculty members feel about these issues?
3. My institution is considering the creation of an open-access fund. What guidance can SPARC provide?
4. What types of charges should an open-access fund cover? Who within my institution should be eligible for these funds?
5. Doesn’t covering the publication fees to traditional subscription-based journals that offer an open-access publishing option amount to double payment?
6. Does spending money on a single author’s publishing take away from the broader acquisition funding of my institution?

For authors
1. How do I know if my institution has an open-access fund for its authors? If my institution does not have an open-access fund, with whom should I speak to encourage the creation of one?
2. If my institution were to have an open-access fund, how does the reimbursement/payment process typically work?
3. To what journals can I submit under this policy?
4. Where can I find a list of open-access journals to which I might apply these funds?
5. If I publish my paper with the assistance of my institution's open-access fund, am I restricted from posting it elsewhere on the Web?

The full guide to creating this kind of funding is available.