Open Access

History of the Open Access Article Publishing Fund

As of AY 20-21, the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects is now administering the campus Open Access Article Publishing Fund. Thank you to AVP Binod Tiwari for funding this vital program and keeping it going! If you have questions about the fund, please email OER Librarian Michaela Keating.

The Open Access Publishing Fund was started in 2015 by Chemistry professor and University Librarian Scott Hewitt and the Pollak Library Open Access Team with support from the Emeriti of California State University, Fullerton. It was the first fund of its kind in the California State University system. Initially funded for $15,000/year, by AY 19-20 it had grown to to $27,500 thanks to generous support from Pollak Library, the Office of Graduate Studies, and the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects. In AY 18-19 CSU Los Angeles started their fund, followed by CSU Long Beach in AY 19-20 and Fresno State in AY 20-21.

Such funds are crucial stop gap measures as university libraries increasingly transition to Transformative Agreements that subsidize Open Access publishing costs in bulk for a given publisher. Such funds essentially ensure that university faculty and students can publish wherever they want while providing for maximum readership for their work. These funds also have tremendous benefits for our students and taxpaying public, giving you access to the university's research. We strongly encourage donations to CSU Fullerton earmarked for the Open Access Article Publishing Fund so that we can make more of our research open. We invite CSU Fullerton faculty and students to help us strategize ways to coordinate fundraising to support the up-front subsidizing of publication costs so that articles can be freely available for everyone in the world to read!