FREE UKSG webinar – Library funding for Open Access at KU Leuven | UKSG

“At KU Leuven we believe that it is essential to apply library budgets to foster a greater diversity in the market of academic publishing. With this purpose in mind we have founded the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access, which is exclusively devoted to stimulating the development of non-profit and community-led publishers, infrastructures and initiatives. During this presentation I will share some insights about the operation of such a fund, the type of open scholarship infrastructures and OA programmes we support, and explain our decision to cease financing article processing charges, even in a Fair OA business model….”

New open access policy within Utrecht University | News @ Utrecht University

Utrecht University aims at a publishing climate in which academic authors publish fully open access (OA). The Executive Board of Utrecht University has agreed to a new OA policy to realise this ambition.

 

Linnaeus puts £30K towards open-access publication – VetSurgeon News – VetSurgeon – VetSurgeon.org

“The Open Access Publication Charge (OAPC) initiative was introduced in 2021 to cover the fees for the company’s employees to publish in prominent peer-reviewed veterinary journals, which can cost up to £3,000 per paper.

Funding was approved for 29 employees to have their work published in eight journals last year, covering topics such as canine mast cell tumours, imaging of canine intracranial intra-axial haemorrhages, electrochemotherapy as a treatment option for feline nasal melanoma and antimicrobial use in female canine urinary tract infections.

The OAPC scheme has now been extended with a fund of at least £30,000 available this year….”

Library funding for open access at KU Leuven

Abstract:  As main buyers of scholarly literature, research libraries have always provided essential economic support for sustaining the market of academic publishing. With the switch to open access (OA), libraries are now faced with transitioning this support from the demand (subscriptions) to the supply (publications) side. The way in which this is currently done, in general, risks strengthening the preponderance of the for-profit approach to scholarly communication. We therefore believe that it is essential to apply library budgets to foster a greater diversity. That is exactly the purpose of the Fund for Fair Open Access, set up by KU Leuven Libraries in 2018, which is exclusively devoted to stimulating the development of non-profit and community-led initiatives. This is achieved by library memberships to sustain open scholarship infrastructure, by supporting diamond OA programmes and by subsidizing OA books published by Leuven University Press. In this article, we will demonstrate the accomplished successes of the fund and share some insights we have gathered along the way, such as our decision to cease financing article processing charges, even in a Fair OA business model.

 

Help Shape the Transition to Open · Series 1.3: Global Transition to Open

“Some of the popular open access transition strategies, mostly promoted by publishers, manage to achieve more open access. But they lack much of what we need: making publishing accessible for everyone, lowering the costs of publishing, coping with an increasing number of publications, reducing the dependency on commercial publishers, transparency of procedures and costs, and a sustainable and irrevocable flipping of journals to open access [undefined]. The goal of achieving open access as the standard in academic publishing has been set for years now. Who do we trust with accelerating the speed of the transition while assuring the inclusiveness, transparency, and sustainability of  the publication system? Clear principles must be reconciled with the will to break new ground. Libraries are in a good position to shape this transition to open….

Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) has the mandate to provide both academia and industry with information from natural sciences and engineering. The library is strongly committed to openness in its mission. Measures include providing access to scholarly literature, deploying infrastructure, and conducting research. In terms of open access, TIB is deeply involved in defining concepts and tools that actively help shape the transition to full open access. In this post, I will give a short overview of the current activities of TIB….

At TIB, there are four major strategies underway, all based on the clear commitment to help shape the transition:

We established a library publishing service, TIB Open Publishing, to offer professional publishing services for non-APC, scholar-led open access journals and conference proceedings.

We developed our leading role in traditional library consortia by establishing models for open access consortia, e.g. through the KOALA project.

We contribute to collectively funded open access publications and systematically integrate this into our acquisition budget.

We help sustain open infrastructure for the open access landscape….”

Structuring the Institutional Open Access Fund management: managing APCs with Oable | 18 November 2021 | Open Publishing Fest

NOVEMBER 18, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

Structuring the Institutional Open Access Fund management: managing APCs with Oable

“Open Access is growing, yet institutions managing individual APCs and paying for these know this can be a burden. Wrong invoices, managing multiple Excel sheets, unstructured data from forms and more issues arise. Oable is a solution developed by Knowledge Unlatched which addresses these issues and helps institutions streamline their workflows to simplify the management and publication process….”

Supporting Impactful Publications (SIP) Program | provost

“The Tulane Supporting Impactful Publications (SIP) assists in covering fees to support open access options for high impact peer-reviewed publications for Tulane scholars serving as corresponding authors who do not have grant or other funds available to cover them. This program is funded and coordinated by the Office of Academic Affairs and Provost and co-funded by the Office of Academic Affairs and Tulane Libraries and Academic Information Resources. …

Eligible applicants may apply for funds once a peer reviewed journal article has been accepted for publication in a journal with impact factor of 8 or above. Applications for journals with impact factors <8 will also be considered for funding when the corresponding author provides a compelling case to do so. One application may be submitted per eligible publication….”

Beyond mandates: For open science to become a norm, it must be recognised and rewarded | Impact of Social Sciences

“Calls to align incentives in academia to promote open research practices are not new. However, in recent years research funders are increasingly implementing policies and schemes designed to promote open science practices amongst researchers. In this post, Maria Cruz and Hans de Jonge outline details of the Dutch Research Council’s (NWO) new Open Science Fund, which they suggest is the natural next step towards a culture of open science in Dutch research.”

Guest Post – Assessing User Perceptions of an Open Access Subvention Fund – The Scholarly Kitchen

“After eight years of funding open access (OA) articles, University Libraries at Virginia Tech has a wealth of quantitative data on article processing charges (APC). However, we lacked qualitative information on authors’ perceptions about funding OA articles, how this funding supports research in specific disciplines, and how authors view OA publishing in general. Since the fund’s inception, the Library’s expenditures on APCs has increased over 500%, prompting us to ask authors about their perceptions of the Open Access Subvention Fund (OASF) as we consider its future development and sustainability….

In fall 2019 we conducted a survey of all the VT authors and co-authors who had requested APC support between August 2012 and October 2019….

As context for understanding respondents’ views on the OASF, we wanted to learn about their views on the value of OA publishing more generally. Overall the attitudes were positive (perhaps not surprising given that those receiving the survey were seeking funding to publish OA) but the nuances are useful to understand.

 

56% of respondents felt that OA publishing should be a positive factor in promotion and tenure (P&T) considerations. But, 58% said it had not been discussed by any P&T committee they served on.
63% of the respondents received no special recognition from their departments for publishing an OA article.
Only 20% of authors reported that they deposited their articles in VTechWorks (our institutional repository). This indicates they may not be aware of the added exposure that the repository could provide for their work. Or, they may believe that by publishing the work OA, there is no need to provide a duplicate a copy in VTechWorks. (Note: OASF-supported articles are deposited in VTechWorks by Scholarly Communication Department staff if the authors do not deposit them.)
Authors are spreading the word about the OASF to their colleagues. While the Library uses a number of communication channels to advertise the fund, word of mouth seems to be very  effective. Nearly 80% indicated that they passed on information they got from a Library session, and 49% of respondents said they learned about the fund from a colleague.
Authors report encouraging others to publish in OA journals, including colleagues at VT (37%) and other universities (20%), graduate students (34%), and occasionally undergraduate students (8%)….”

Fair OA publishers, infrastructures and initiatives supported by KU Leuven | KU Leuven Open Science

KU Leuven promotes non-commercial and community-owned approaches of OA, especially through the KU Leuven Fund for Fair OA. On the one hand, the fund supports innovative publishing initiatives and infrastructures. On the other hand, the fund covers membership costs for consortia and advocacy organizations focusing on a non-commercial approach to scholarly communication. On this page you can find an overview of everything that KU Leuven endorses.

[…]

2020 Update of the University Open Access Publication Fund

“We are fortunate in our campus’s commitment to open access publishing. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the only institution offering such funding in the state. The University of Wisconsin-Madison closed its fund in 2014 after spending its initial $50,000 seed money. For comparison of levels of open access initiatives at other universities, we reviewed 15 UWM peeruniversities and found that only three offer such funds: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Temple University, and University of Illinois at Chicago. From our survey of their fund coordinators, we learned that only one fund (allocated annually at $20,000) was supported entirely from the library’s budget; and the two other funds included a partial contribution (one at $15,000) from the library’s budget along with money ($50,000-60,000 total per year) collected from schools, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. In writing this report (April 2020) we checked back on the status of OA funds at the three peer institutions and discovered that two were not currently active, either exhausted or being evaluated until the next fiscal year. After our survey of peer institutions in 2018, we added the UWM UOAP to two directories: Open Access Funds in Action hosted by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)1 and Open Access Directory hosted by the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College2 ….”

“Role of Librarian in Promoting Open Access Study of Indian Librarians Community” by vrushali Dandawate

Abstract:  From long time open access has become important for libraries and information centres. Due to shrinking budget of libraries and continuous growth in open access journals and other information resources libraries are adopting and promoting open access. Many Libraries are moving from closed access to open access of resources. Every year nearly 10000 plus open access journals are coming in market so here librarians has to help their patrons to identify the correct journals for publish the research work and make funds available for APC charges for such journals. Librarians are supporting Open Access publishing and also playing an important role in promoting OA. But understanding importance of open access by user community is depend upon how actively that institute librarian promote OA. This paper deals about awareness of open Access among Indian Librarians Community  the main aim of this study to get idea about Librarians view about open Access and various open access resources.  Data is collected through online survey method from various Librarians group.

 

New funds needed to cover open-access costs

“The international Plan S research-funder consortium cOAlition S proposes that institutional libraries should transition from subscription to ‘pure publish’ deals with open-access journals by 2024 (see Nature 572, 586; 2019). However, the coalition represents just 16 European funding agencies and 3 international charity foundations. Many other European funders are not in a position to pay open-access publication fees on behalf of their researchers.

For example, Denmark’s 14,000 private foundations that currently support half of the country’s research are stretched to the limit. Their researchers will therefore have no choice but to pay the bill out of their own research grants, which are already under intense pressure from spiralling costs.

Remedial action is urgently needed if publication and knowledge flow are not to be skewed towards the wealthiest countries and universities. For example, national or European Union funds could be established to help cash-strapped researchers cover their publishing costs.”