Florida Tech Open Access Subvention Fund

We are now accepting funding requests for FY25.

Florida Institute of Technology is committed to supporting faculty in the dissemination of their knowledge and research outcomes as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the university offers an Open Access Subvention Fund (OASF) to subsidize article processing fees for scholarly peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication in Open Access (OA) journals. 

The aim of this program is to enable Florida Tech authors to engage in new transformational open publishing environments and support faculty, researchers and graduate students who wish to maximize their research impact by publishing in peer-reviewed open access journals. This also supports the goal of making Florida Tech research findings immediately and freely available worldwide. This funding program aligns with Evans Library's strategic direction to support the research endeavors of our faculty and students, including providing unrestricted access to digital research and scholarship.

OA publishing value lies in its ability to allow subscription-based journals and OA journals to compete on a more level playing field by providing equitable support for the processing-fee business model of OA journals. To support the goal of free accessible scientific information, universities around the world pledged to support fees for open access publication. Specifically, the universities commit to “the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by [their] faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds” (Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity). We hope this will help raise awareness among Florida Tech authors of the benefits of OA publishing and to encourage new ways of thinking about digital scholarship and information access.

What is the OASF Fund for?

The OASF is a Fund intended to support faculty and students' publishing of research by providing a means for authors, without access to funds from other sources, to pay for reasonable article processing or publishing fees charged by full open access publishers. OASF can be used to underwrite all or part of the article-processing fee (APF) that is charged by the open access publisher and will be paid directly to the publisher.

It is important to stress that the Fund should be used as a last resort for reimbursement of reasonable article processing fees for articles authored by Florida Tech researchers accepted for publication in eligible OA peer-reviewed journals.

Evans Library will administer the Fund.

Guidelines:

Eligibility and Requirements

• Only current Florida Tech faculty, research scientists, graduate students and postdocs are eligible to receive funding.
• Articles submitted for publication after January 1, 2015 are eligible for funding.
• The university will provide funds for article-processing fees accrued when publishing in peer-reviewed OA journals that are:
  • Listed in the Directory of Open Access Journal
  • Members of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
  • Have policies and practices consistent with the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association Code of Conduct
  • Published in a fully open-access format and have a publicly accessible published schedule of article processing fees
  • Waive their fees in cases of financial hardship
  • Immediately, openly accessible at publication; no delayed publishing or embargo periods are accepted

Not eligible:

• Articles in journals that charge an annual subscription fee that make some articles available after an author pays fees and journals that use a delayed open-access model, or offer an “open choice” option to make a particular article open access are not eligible.
• Reimbursements for article processing fees that are endowed by a gift or grant from a foundation, institution or agency.
• Articles that are the result of research funded by a grant are not elligible and should be funded from their respective grants. You may also consider publishing in one of the journals that waive Open Access fees for Florida Tech authors.

Other Obligations:

• The article must be available immediately openly accessible upon publication, with no embargo.
• The author must agree to submit a copy of the post-review publication to Florida Tech’s Scholarship Repository no later than three (3) months after receiving this award or three (3) months post-publication. Authors will be contacted by the Repository staff to complete this task.
• The author agrees to make a best-faith effort to provide the following attribution / acknowledgement in the article: "Publication of this article was funded in part by the Open Access Subvention Fund and the John H. Evans Library."

Funding: 

Support is limited to $1,500 per article and $3000 per author per fiscal year. For papers with multiple Florida Tech co-authors, the program would still subsidize the same total amount of up to $1,500 per article. However,  the amount would be prorated among each of the authors for the purposes of calculating amounts towards the annual limit for individuals, i.e., three Florida Tech authors supported at $500 each.

Unused funds cannot be rolled over for use in future years.

Only publishing fees will be covered and authors must attest that the journal complies with eligibility requirements to receive the funding. The fund will not cover PeerJ membership fees at any level, at the point of submission or of acceptance. It will not also cover extra charges such as color fees and page charges.

Funding does not imply an endorsement of any journal nor does it imply an assessment of the quality or research value of any article. Exceptions to above policies may be made on a case-by-case basis.

Procedures:

 Eligible individuals may immediately apply for funding upon acceptance of their article by a peer-reviewed open access journal.

To request funds, faculty authors should fill out the Open Access Fund Request Form. The request will be reviewed for eligibility and the author informed whether it has been approved. Please direct questions to Bill Bowman.