Open Access Publishing Fund: About & Open Access Options

What funding is available for open access (OA) publishing?

All UCSF corresponding authors are eligible to receive either a discount or funding support through several UC-wide and UCSF-specific publisher agreements to publish their articles open access. These agreements operate separately from the discontinued UCSF Open Access Fund. The discounts or funding support are based on the publishers we've signed agreements with and the terms vary by agreement. New agreements are added to the webpage as soon as they are announced. See details at https://tiny.ucsf.edu/publishingdiscounts. 

The Library does not have funds outside of the existing publisher agreements linked above.

What to do if funding is not available for your journal or publisher

1. If your journal is fully open access (OA is not optional) and you do not have funds to pay the article processing charge (APC), you may be able to request an APC waiver or discount from the journal. 
   • Check the journal's author guidelines for their policy and process for requesting an APC waiver
   • Provide this letter to the journal (if needed) as validation that the UCSF Fund is no longer providing awards
2. If OA is optional in your journal, you can forego the OA option and publish your article under the traditional subscription model. Then, as specified by UC's open access policies, deposit your final author accepted manuscript (AAM) in UC's eScholarship platform via the UC Publication Management System.
   • UC policies give all UC authors the right to publish the AAM version of their scholarly articles immediately upon publication and without having to pay a fee
   • See details about UC's open access policies, and contact the Library with questions

See the University of California guide, Help Make Your Research Articles Freely Available to the World, via a graphical representation of the pathways to open access for scholarly articles, or a text-only version. 

The UCSF Open Access Publishing Fund helped cover open access (OA) publication fees between 2015-2022 for UCSF authors without grant or other funds available to cover them. 

Funding source

The UCSF Academic Senate provided funding from 2015-2019, supplemented by the Library since 2017. From 2020-22, the Library was the sole source of funding. See the 2017 announcement for the Fund's background with Academic Senate funding, and an overview of the fund from 2015 until its closure in 2022.

Program goals

• Provide grants to UCSF authors to defray open access publishing charges when other funding is not available
• Foster greater dissemination of the work of UCSF scholars
• Encourage author control of copyright through OA publishing
• Provide opportunities for the UCSF community to engage in discussion about OA publishing models and wider scholarly communication topics
• Support UCSF's commitment through the OA2020 Initiative to repurpose subscription expenditures towards OA publishing

• 2022 May 26:: Read more about the UCSF Open Access Fund and how to get funding through UC open access agreements with publishers. The Library does not plan to renew the Open Access Fund.
   
• 2022 April 8: The UCSF Open Access Fund has officially shut down, since the funds are over-committed for the fiscal year. The Library will not be resuming the fund in the new fiscal year due to budget limitations. This closure does not impact publisher agreements that cover or discount open access publishing fees for UCSF authors. Those agreements remain active, and additional publisher agreements are forthcoming.

• 2022 April 1: The UCSF Open Access Fund is nearly fully spent. We are not accepting new applications until we assess the budget situation and determine if we can take any more applications this fiscal year. This does not impact publisher agreements that cover or help cover open access publishing fees for UCSF/UC authors - those agreements remain active. See all open access publisher agreements and discounts. 

• 2022 March 30: Due to a surge in demand, we are faced with the possibility of a depletion of funds before the end of the fiscal year. To ensure that funds are going to authors who are not part of a research grant and who truly need the funds, the Fund can now only reimburse the award applicant (the first author) through UCSF MyExpense.

• 2021 November 30: The Fund is active and accepting applications for fiscal year 2021-2022. Due to reductions in the budget, modifications have been made to who is eligible to apply for funding, effective 2021 December 1:
  • Journal articles: students, postdocs, and staff who are first authors on journal articles
    • Authors meeting the eligibility and publication requirements may receive up to $2000 per scholarly article
  • Books and book chapters: all UCSF personnel and students, including faculty, may continue to apply for up to $5000 towards publishing an open access book or $2000 for a book chapter