UNC-Chapel Hill Open Access Authors' Fund

About the Fund

• Provides support for publishing charges related to offering free immediate open access to journal articles
• Eligible authors are UNC-CH faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate or professional students without grant funds to cover publication fees
• Award maximum is $1000 per article
• Sponsored by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development
• Managed by the Health Sciences Library and the Academic Affairs Library

Retrieve a copy of the application.

Open access authors’ fees at core journal publishers

• American Chemical Society Author Choice
  Open access is $1,000 for ACS members affiliated with an ACS subscribing institution.
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
  Open access surcharge of $800 provides immediate open access for authors at any institution with a site license. All articles are free online after 6 months.
• Public Library of Science
  PLos Biology and PLos Medicine are $2750; PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens are $2100; PLoS ONE are $1250 and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases are $1750 (pre-launch) $2100 (after launch); institutional membership reduces a UNC-CH corresponding author's fee by 15%.
• Use the Directory of Open Access Journals to find more.

Why choose open access?

“Providing OA to your own work is not an act of charity that only benefits others, or a sacrifice justified only by the greater good.  It's not a sacrifice at all.  It increases your visibility, retrievability, audience, usage, and citations.  It's about career-building.  For publishing scholars, it would be a bargain even if it were costly, difficult, and time-consuming.” Suber

More information about open access publishing

See the Health Sciences Library Open Access and Scholarly Communications website.

Vice Chancellor Tony Waldrop established The Open Access Fund in March 2005 at the request of University Librarian Sarah Michalak and Health Sciences Library Director Carol Jenkins. The University Libraries are committed to raising awareness among the faculty about open access and open archive publishing alternatives and helping to pay the associated publication costs.