Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 69.61
Liaison Tina Woolston
Submission Date Nov. 2, 2022

STARS v2.2

Tufts University
IN-41: Textbook Affordability

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Tina Woolston
Director
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution host a peer-to-peer textbook exchange program, textbook lending library, or alternate textbook project?:
Yes

A brief description of the textbook exchange program, textbook lending library, or alternate textbook project:

The Book It Forward Lending Library The Lending Library through the FIRST Resource Center accepts donated books at any time during the year. You are welcome to donate books directly to the office at 20 Professors Row at any time, through the bookstore at the end of the semester, or to boxes in select residential halls on campus at the end of the year. Students with a Family Contribution of $10,000 and below may access books at any time during the semester. Those with a higher Family Contribution may only access books after the add period. Books are expected to be returned by the end of the semester, or sooner if not being used. Tufts also encourages students to view textbooks on reserve and consider interlibrary loans.


Does the institution provide incentives for academic staff that explicitly encourage the authorship, peer review, and/or adoption of open access textbooks?:
Yes

A brief description of the incentives to encourage the authorship, peer review, and/or adoption of open access textbooks:

Tisch Library Open Access Publishing Fund

The Tisch Library Open Access Publishing Fund advances open access (OA) publishing at Tufts by providing financial support to authors in the School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering who want to publish their work open access but do not have other sources of funding to cover OA fees. Guided by the library's Strategic Framework, we aim to increase access to research & scholarship created at Tufts and to direct library collection funds towards making scholarship openly available.

For the 2021-2022 academic year, we've made available up to $30,000 in total funds for a new pilot program with the goal of filling in gaps in the existing OA funding structures at Tufts to enable all members of the AS&E community to publish open access.

We will evaluate this expanded pilot program at the end of the 2022 fiscal year.


Website URL where information about the textbook affordability incentives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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