Open Access: Author Fund

OA Fund ***The Open Access Author Fund is currently out of funding.  This notice will be update if more funds become available.***

The Open Access (OA) Author Fund is designed to heighten the visibility and accessibility of LSU scholarship and to support faculty, staff, and graduate students who choose to publish in open access journals or books that require author-fees for accepted manuscripts. It is intended for authors with limited sources of funding for open access publication charges.

Awarding is done through a rolling process. Applicants will be reviewed within 10 business days. Everyone that meets the eligibility criteria is encouraged to apply.  The fund will award up to $2,000 to recipients to pay publisher author-fees. (We have increased the award from $1500 to $2000 to help keep pace with rising publisher charges.)

Author Eligibility

All faculty, graduate students, post-docs, and staff at the LSU Baton Rouge campus are eligible to apply.

Authors applying for funds along with the primary authors of the publications must be LSU employees or students. Preference is given to research or scholarship primarily conducted by LSU employees or students.

We expect researchers to exhaust other funding sources and to use appropriate research grant funds to pay publication charges. For example, the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation will fund open access publications as part of their research grants. For questions related to research funds and your application, email us at openaccess@lsu.edu.

Publication Eligibility

Funded works (articles, books, or book chapters) must be published in fully open access journals or fully open access books that will be publicly available at the time of publication.  Works that are submitted or accepted for publication will be considered.   Works that are already published do not qualify for funding.

• Journals and Books must have their fee schedule publicly available online.
• Journals and Books must meet the following criteria:
• The publisher is compliant with the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association’s Code of Conduct.
• The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), or the publisher is listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) or meets DOAJ/DOAB selection criteria.
• Hybrid journals or books are ineligible (journals/books that charge subscriptions or payment and also enable specific articles/chapters to be made Open Access via author payment). Compliance will be confirmed as part of the application review.

Fund reviewers may also use other non-articulated factors when deciding whether a journal/publisher meets the quality criteria for funding.

 Publication Eligibility

Works submitted to an open access journal or book publisher yet not already published are eligible. These will have the publication status of ready for submission, submitted for publication, or accepted for publication. Funds will not be provided for manuscripts that are still being written or that have been published prior to the request for funds.

Fund Cap, Disbursement, and Administration

Fund Cap

Funds may be used to pay processing charges up to $2,000 per publication. Color, page, or image charges are not eligible.

A requesting author may be awarded funding once a calendar year. 

Fund Disbursement

• Requests may be made upon manuscript submission or immediately upon acceptance.
• Works that are ready for submission to the journal or book publisher and are awarded funds will have four months to complete the peer review process. If the paper is not accepted by the publisher or a PO not received for payment within four months of funding approval, the award will expire. The author may later reapply for funds.
• Funds are not transferable.  If the work funded is not accepted for publication, the award expires.
• Once funds have been approved, the requesting author may send the publisher's invoice to openaccess@lsu.edu or direct the publisher to do so. 
• Funds may be paid only to publisher invoices. Individual authors will not be reimbursed or paid for retroactive publications.
• Funds will only be awarded directly to the publisher of the journal or book identified in the application.

If funds are encumbered for a submitted manuscript that is later not accepted, those funds will be released back to the OA Fund.

LSU Libraries administer and assess the program and reports to the Office of Academic Affairs. 

Review Process

Funding will be distributed through a rolling review process. If not awarded, an author will be notified. 

The fund is a limited resource intended to support open access publishing across the university. We expect researchers to request funding for open access publication from their funding agency if they can do so. If such funds are not available, we welcome your application.

Institutional Repository

LSU Libraries will upload the published version of each funded work to the LSU Scholarly Repository, LSU's open access digital archive of the research, publications, data, and records of the LSU community. 

Acknowledgements

The structure of this program and language of this guide was taken with permission from the One University Open Access Author Fund at The University of Kansas.