Establishing an Open Access Publication Fund

Following Texas A&M University-College Station’s success with their Open Access to Knowledge Fund (https://library.tamu.edu/services/scholarly_communication/Open_Access/oakfund.html), at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, the Mary and Jeff Bell Library teamed up with the Division of Research and Innovation to seek support for an Open Access Publishing Fund in a commitment to further open access initiatives. The landscape of scholarly communication is changing particularly in the exchange of money between authors, publishers, and readers. The library aimed to support open access publishing by supporting the university’s own authors and researchers. Additionally, the library expected to further outreach on open access initiatives, including the Institutional Repository. Although the fund was limited—essentially a pilot project—the goal was to demonstrate the need to support open access publishing.