The VCU Libraries Open Access Fund is open for applications for fiscal year July 2019 – June 2020. The Open Access Publishing Fund supports the publication of research articles in peer-reviewed journals that are available to all on the web without charge.

Some open access journals charge author fees to cover the costs of peer review and other services common to all scholarly journals. The Open Access Publishing Fund helps subsidize these fees, thus minimizing the financial barrier to publishing in open access journals. 

There are two changes that VCU open access authors should be aware of:

• Hindawi is discontinuing its institutional membership program that has provided free open access publishing for VCU authors. Any manuscript submitted to Hindawi by August 31, 2019 will still be covered under the current VCU institutional membership. VCU Libraries is committing some of the money spent for the Hindawi institutional membership toward the Open Access Publishing Fund, in anticipation of an increase in applications to the fund for Hindawi journals.
• For this academic year, VCU Libraries is lowering the funding cap per article from $2,000 to $1,000 as a strategy to extend the fund later into the year. Last year, the fund ran out of money in February. In addition to the subsidy provided by the Open Access Publishing Fund, authors are encouraged to pursue funds from other sources, such as grants, to pay for the full cost of author fees.

VCU Libraries has provided open access funding since 2015, and during that time has assisted with the publication of 99 peer reviewed open access articles from VCU authors.

VCU Libraries also advances open access through institution memberships, library collections, consortia, outreach, and Scholars Compass.

Contact us if you are interested in how VCU Libraries can open up your work to a wide world of readers and increased impact.