Open access subvention fund

Guidelines

• All faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students are eligible.
• Funds are available to underwrite article processing fees for scholarly peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication in an open access or hybrid OA journal.
• Support is limited to $1500.00 per article and $3000.00 per author per year. For papers with multiple Virginia Tech co-authors, the program would still subsidize the same total amount of up to $1,500 per article but it would be prorated among each of the authors for the purposes of calculating amounts towards the annual limit for individuals, for example, 3 Virginia Tech authors counted at $500 each.
• Authors must have no other sources of funding available. Funding is not available for papers resulting from research sponsored by agencies that allow allocations for OA fees, ex. NIH.
• A journal's publisher must be a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) or comply with OASPA's Code of Conduct.
• For fully OA journals, the journal must be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals .
• For hybrid OA journals, the publishers must have reduced institutional subscription prices, or plan to reduce prices this next year, based on the number of open access publications in the journals.
• Funding is limited and will be disbursed to authors upon approval and in the order in which they were received.

Application process

Start by completing an Open access subvention fund request form , 1) immediately upon acceptance or 2) after an article is submitted and before it’s accepted. The application is sent to a team in University Libraries that reviews applications and vets and prioritizes them based on criteria for eligibility, guidelines, and available funding. The program is administered by University Libraries and is under the guidance of the Faculty Senate’s University Library Committee.

Reimbursement

After the application is accepted and the author is sent notification of approval, the author sends University Libraries an invoice or other proof of payment, and University Libraries reimburses the department or sends payment directly to the publisher.