Coastal Carolina University’s University Libraries has allocated $100,000 to fund, promote, and support open access publishing for CCU faculty, students, and staff. The funds will be available beginning July 1, 2023.

According to John Felts, CCU’s head of library technology and collections, the open access movement in scholarly publishing has emerged as a result of advances in technology and in response to the unsustainable increase in journal costs for libraries along with global disparities in access to scholarship. Open access publishing increases the visibility and impact of faculty research, improves access, and makes knowledge more accessible to society.

However, an article processing charge must be paid by an author to a journal publisher to retain rights to their scholarly works and to make an article available via open access. These charges cover publishing and licensing costs and allow readers to access information immediately without encountering a paywall.

To encourage and support CCU faculty to publish in open access publications, CCU’s University Libraries has allocated $100,000 that is typically utilized to purchase scholarly resources to instead be used to underwrite these article processing charges.

“We are excited to provide initial funding to enhance CCU’s commitment to the open access movement,” said University Librarian Melvin Davis, Ph.D. “Works completed using these funds will be included in CCU Digital Commons as a way to further expand the impact of scholarly production taking place at the University.”

Tim Bucknall, assistant dean for electronic resources and information technology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro and founder of the Carolina Consortium, said: “I’m unaware of any universities of CCU’s size in the nation that allocate this much money to support open access publishing. Impressive!”

For more information, contact Felts at jfelts@coastal.edu.