Open Access Publishing Fund to Help Students, Faculty, Staff Get Published

University of Arkansas

Mullins Library

A new fund will help reduce the cost of publishing for University of Arkansas students, faculty and staff. The Open Access Publishing Fund was created by the University Libraries, and seven colleges and campus units contributed. Authors who do not have another source of funding can apply for up to $2,000 to cover publishing costs for an open access journal article or monograph. 

"Open access publishing is becoming more common, and cooperatively funded programs supporting it are now the norm across university campuses," said L. Angie Ohler, associate dean for content and digital initiatives at the University Libraries. "The goal of the program is to help University of Arkansas authors who do not otherwise have grant funding to pay for publication fees. Established journals and presses now routinely offer authors the option of publishing open access after their work has passed peer review and been accepted for publication. What this means is that the work is made freely available online upon publication to anyone in the world who wishes to read it in contrast to scholarship that sits behind a paywall and only accessible to those who pay to access it. This means higher visibility for University of Arkansas authored works, higher citation rates, and a greater impact in the field. For tenure track faculty and student authors, it's also an opportunity to establish a strong early career publication record."

Students, faculty and staff of the flagship institution in Fayetteville are encouraged to apply for funding as soon as they receive word that their article has been accepted by a publisher. The Office of Scholarly Communications has created a Research Guide with details about eligibility, terms and conditions. Specific questions can be sent to scholar@uark.edu.

Units that contributed funds to this project include the Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Provost, College of Engineering, Division of Research and Innovation, Graduate School and International Education, Honors College and University Libraries. 

"Open access publishing represents the research world of the future, which will be centered on equitable distribution of knowledge from diverse sets of researchers—faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates," said Lynda Coon, Dean of the Honors College. "The Honors College is thrilled to be part of this new initiative because of our strong partnership with the talented staff and faculty of Libraries and because of our shared commitment to research excellence."

The University of Arkansas is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible, and publishing in open access journals is one way of accomplishing that. Additional Libraries open access initiatives include a "read and publish" agreement with Cambridge University Press; the university's institutional repository, ScholarWorks@UARK; funded course materials conversion programs and workshops and open data resources.