How are you planning to share the articles, presentations, and other outputs that result from your grant? Cook Library can help you identify publishing channels that meet funder requirements and have a broad reach.
Open Access Publication
Definition: Open access (OA) resources are digital products of scholarship that are free to access for everyone, regardless of institutional affiliation, and are free of many copyright and licensing restrictions found in traditional journal publishing.
There are many possible paths that a primary investigator can pursue to make the publications and other grant products open access:
- You can use grant funds to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs).
- Please note that Cook Library is working with several publishers on Transformative Agreements to reduce or eliminate APCs. Please visit our Transformative Agreements guide to access the latest information about the availability of these agreements to TU researchers.
- You can publish in an open access journal.
- You can deposit resulting publications in ScholarWorks@Towson, the open-access institutional repository for scholarly and other professional works created by members of the Towson University community.
- Items deposited into ScholarWorks@Towson are made available and disseminated online, thereby increasing their visibility and impact. They also receive long-term preservation. Furthermore, adding files to the repository can satisfy data management and open access requirements of research funding agencies.
Example: A researcher receives a grant to conduct an educational program in a local school and then publishes an article about the program in a scholarly journal. The researcher wants to make the publication publicly available so the funding agency, the partner school, and other interested schools will have access to their research, so they deposit a copy of the article in ScholarWorks@Towson.
Costs: Consider including the cost of article processing fees (APCs) for open access publication in your grant, as many grants now require open access publication of results. Include approximately $3,000-5,000 per publication. Inclusion of grant-related outputs in ScholarWorks@Towson is provided at no cost to the grant.
Contact: To determine the best solution for sharing and preserving your grant publications, please contact Miranda Phair, our Publishing & Open Scholarship Librarian to discuss file sizes, format, and publisher requirements.
Creating an Open Access Journal
Definition: Grantseekers who are interested in creating a new, open access journal as a product of their grant can partner with Cook Library to publish the journal using the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform.
Example: A team in the College of Business and Economics is applying for a grant and are interested in starting a new open access journal as one of the products of the grant. The team contacts Cook Library’s Publishing Team to discuss costs and other requirements before submitting the grant proposal.
Costs: $3,000/year for first 2 years of grant-funded project to cover librarian effort and hosting costs. The library will absorb the costs of hosting the grant after the first 2 years of grant funding.
Contact: To discuss the creation of an open access journal as part of a grant, please contact Cook Library’s Publishing Team at LIBRARY-ScholPub@towson.edu. They will work with you to determine the publication and hosting costs to include in your grant budget along with an expected timeline and what’s required to create a new journal.