The TAMU-CC Open Access Publication Fund was started as a way to support TAMU-CC Faculty and Researchers publish Open Access. (You may have seen Open Access mentioned recently in the news about the Coronavirus.) I mentioned this Fund in a blog post back in October, during Open Access Week. Now I’d like to tell you all a little bit more about the fund and the research the Bell Library has been able to support and help publish over the past few months.
The goals of the Open Access Publication Fund include increasing access to research and scholarship produced by researchers at TAMU-CC, supporting and encouraging innovative models of scholarly publishing that take advantage of digital and networking technologies, and to help cover the costs for TAMU-CC faculty and researchers publishing materials to fully open access venues. One of the benefits to publishing in Open Access Journals include accelerated discovery: articles aren’t restricted behind what we call paywalls. As students, staff, and faculty, Islanders have access to a lot of materials that they often find through our wonderful databases; however, a good chunk of that information is accessible to you because the library pays for access (aka when you graduate, you will lose your off campus access to these resources). There are some things that you might be able to find through a public library, but only if the library has the funds and demand to provide access for their readers. That’s why public enrichment is considered another benefit to publishing open access. Taxpayers who support our faculty to do their research can have access and learn from the research happening here at TAMU-CC. There are a lot of benefits to open access publication; there are some downsides as well, cost is one of the most often argued.
Traditionally, researchers publish their work through journals and books and then the publishers charge readers to access and read the works. There are a few different open access models, but one model is such that researchers pay to have their work published, and then readers only need a device and access to the internet to read the published work! That is where the library comes in: this year, with the generous support of the Division of Research and Innovation, the Office of the Provost, and the Mary and Jeff Bell Library, TAMU-CC authors had access to $15,000 to publish their work in open access venues. As of January 27th, the Open Access Publication Fund has supported the publication of seven articles. Authors of these seven articles represent the College of Science and Engineering and the College of Education and Human Development. You can find their works in the TAMU-CC Institutional Repository (also a topic of a previous blog post), including works by Dr. Daniel E. Newmire, Dr. Toyin Ajisafe, and Hongjie Wang, Dr. Xinping Hu, Dr. Michael Wetz, and Kaijun Lu.
We’re excited to say that the original fund of $15,000 is dwindling quickly (proof of the buy-in and need). Despite this, we hope that interested authors continue to reach out and let us know that they are interested in the fund, as we hope to renew the fund (perhaps with an increased amount!) next school year. If you have any questions, concerns, or wish to chat about open access, publishing, copyright, and pretty much anything else, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, alexa.hight@tamucc.edu!
