UCI Libraries Open Access Fund Available to UCI Authors

UC Irvine and the California Digital Library (CDL) are working to support faculty research publishing through online publishing platforms and support services with the UCI Libraries Open Access Fund. The UCI Libraries Open Access Fund will allow authors to publish their research in open access publications to increase the visibility, readership and impact of their work. The fund will pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) or open access fees for UC authors who do not otherwise have external grants to pay such fees. Programs like this will be available on all ten UC campuses, similar to Berkeley's Research Impact Initiative (BRII) and the campus-based OA funds at twenty-four other North America universities.

Open Access (OA) is the free, immediate availability of scholarly works that are available for all users without payment through the Internet.  OA concerns the outputs that scholars normally give away free to be published – peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, and datasets of various kinds. Open Access supports new models for publishing within the broader landscape of academic libraries. The UC system has demonstrated its commitment to supporting open access publishing by taking up memberships with BioMed Central (BMC) and Public Library of Science (PloS), and supporting such resources as arXiv.

Support for open access to scholarly work has grown steadily over the last decade in the UC system and at other colleges and universities. The UC Academic Senate faculty are considering a policy for open access to scholarly articles which would facilitate institution-wide digital distribution via open access repositories. For example, eScholarship provides an open access publishing platform for research articles, journals, seminars, conference proceedings, and books. Materials loaded to eScholarship are discoverable online through Google and indexed in research databases. Authors can trust that eScholarship will provide permanent, dependable, persistent DOI for their publications.

Faculty members retain the copyright of their own scholarly work by default and grant a nonexclusive license that allows UC to make those works freely available. The Library can help faculty authors manage their author rights to their publications.

Faculty, researchers, and post docs can apply for funding from the Scholarly Communication and Management Program (SCAMP) website (https://www.lib.uci.edu/about/projects/scamp/scholarly-communication-and-management-program.html).