Rachel Borchardt (Science Librarian, American University) and I gave a talk about our research on library open access funds. Sessions details and link to materials are below:
Follow the Money: An exploratory study of open access publishing funds’ impact
Academic libraries have been supporting researchers with open access funds since 2005, and more libraries join this movement every year. These funds generally pay the article processing charges (APC) for articles accepted to peer-reviewed fully open access journals. According to SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, libraries have reimbursed APCs for almost 5,500 open access publications. Organizations like SPARC and the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) collect and provide access to information about OA mandates, funds and policies, but where exactly is the money from these OA funds going? Who is using library OA funds to publish their work? Where do they publish? What kind of impact do these funds have on scholarly communication? In order to address these questions, the authors collected citation and author data for articles supported by library OA funds. This session presents the initial findings of their data analysis – including author, academic field, and journal trends.
The objective of this session is to help librarians better understand how and where OA funds are being spent, with a particular emphasis on the scholars who apply for these funds, the journals in which they choose to publish, and the academic disciplines in which researchers seek out OA publishing opportunities. Findings may inform the development of new OA fund programs, as well as OA awareness efforts on campus. In addition, libraries who already offer this type of funding might use these findings to develop outreach to underrepresented disciplines or types of researchers, refine effective messaging or talking points regarding OA funds, or consider changes to their OA funding policies.