Managing an Open Access Fund: Tips from the Trenches and Questions for the Future

Abstract

The authors describe the process and results of an ongoing Open Access Fund program at the Health Sciences Library of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The fund has helped students and other early career researchers pay for the article processing charge or APC to publish their articles in an OA journal since 2013. In the three years since, the fund has paid the APC for 39 applicants with a total expenditure of $37,576. Most applicants were students as intended, however the fund supported a surprisingly large number of medical residents and junior faculty. Individuals associated with the School of Medicine overwhelmingly represented the awardees compared to other units, and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals were the most common journal they published in. While acknowledging the undeniable benefit of the fund to the awardees, the authors also pose challenging questions about the future role of libraries in subsidizing open access journals.