University of Connecticut
AC-11: Access to Research

About the Repository DigitalCommons@UConn is a digital repository of the intellectual output of the University of Connecticut's faculty, staff, and students. It can accommodate virtually any publication, presentation, or production in electronic format. DigitalCommons@UConn represents a way for the UConn community to organize, store and preserve its research in a single unified location. It is made available through Digital Commons software, licensed by the University of Connecticut Libraries and powered by the Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress). After a successful one-year pilot, DigitalCommons@UConn is now open to the entire University, including the regional campuses, and the Health Center and Law School. If you are interested in submitting material to DigitalCommons@UConn, please contact Betsy Pittman. About Institutional Repositories Institutional Repositories (IRs) bring together all of a University's research under one umbrella, with an aim to preserve and provide access to that research. IRs are an excellent vehicle for working papers or copies of published articles and conference papers. Presentations, senior theses, and other works not published elsewhere can also be published in the IR. Institutional repositories are a part of the larger open access movement, which aims to provide free access to research over the Internet. Information about the open access movement and scholarly communication issues in general can be found at the UConn Libraries' web site on scholarly communication. For more information on institutional repositories see The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper, from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. Copyright Information Any author publishing work in DigitalCommons@UConn must either have copyright for the work or the permission of the copyright holder to publish in the IR. Authors retain copyright for submissions, assuming they own it. For details on copyright issues, see the Copyright Guidelines section of our "For Authors" page. The UConn Libraries maintain an extensive site on copyright issues.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT OPEN ACCESS AUTHOR FUND Scholars have historically published research in traditional journals which, because of increasing subscription costs and decreasing library budgets, are less and less available to segments of the research community. At the same time, scholars’ need to access that scholarship is consistently growing in intensity and volume. Open access (OA) journals are a viable alternative venue for scholarly articles. They offer the same services as traditional journals – peer review, production, and distribution – but are freely available to anyone, anywhere. OA journals do not charge subscription fees but cover expenses through other sources, including processing fees paid by or on behalf of authors publishing in the journal. An open access fund is a pool of money set aside to support fees for open access publications. It underwrites reasonable charges for articles written by researchers and published in fee-based OA journals. A University of Connecticut Open Access Author Fund, co-sponsored by the University of Connecticut Libraries, the University of Connecticut Health Center Library, and the Vice President for Research, will improve authors’ ability to publish in OA journals, increasing the visibility of their research and accelerating the availability of online peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly journals. Universities currently subsidize traditional journals by subscribing to them but long term trends of significant price increases make this model unsustainable in the long run. Providing support for OA journals will put them on a more level playing field and improve opportunities for a more equitable, sustainable system of scholarly publishing to flourish. Content Eligibility The Open Access Author Fund is available for journal articles accepted for publication in peer‐reviewed, open access publications that do not charge readers or their institutions for unfettered access to the peer reviewed articles published. To be eligible, a journal must meet these additional requirements: • Be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals • Be a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association or adhere to its Code of Conduct • Have publicly available a standard article fee schedule The fund cannot be used to support “hybrid” open access publishing, where individual articles from journals that are generally subscription access only are made openly available when author fees are paid. The published article must also be made available in Digital Commons@UConn, the digital institutional repository (IR) of the intellectual output of the University of Connecticut’s faculty, staff, and students. UConn Eligibility The fund is available to any University of Connecticut faculty, post‐doctoral researcher, staff member, or graduate student author. The applicant must be the corresponding author for the publication, and the article must indicate University of Connecticut affiliation. Priority will be given to authors not yet funded in a given year. Authors must exhaust other funding avenues (e.g., grants) before applying to the Open Access Author fund. Funding On a pilot basis, the University will fund a maximum of $25,000 in any given fiscal year. An additional $10,000 is available for UConn Health Center authors. Funding is limited to $1,250 per article, regardless of the number of authors. Individual authors or research groups are limited to a total $2,500 reimbursement in a fiscal year. Reimbursement will cover only direct costs for open access publication (not the cost of reprints, color illustration fees, non-OA page charges, web hosting for self-archiving, etc.). Requests for funding will be reviewed by the University Libraries’ Scholarly Communications and Copyright Committee and a decision for funding support will be communicated to the author. Authors must provide a copy of the publisher’s invoice to the library. Payment will be made in the form of a reimbursement through a departmental fund transfer.

The Open Access Author Fund is co-sponsored by the University of Connecticut Libraries which encourages authors to make their publications open access. The UConn Homer Babbidge Library website has links to the open access research and additionally, library staff gives presentations to classes or groups on how to utilize the library resources, including open access databases. If a published article is eligible as a funded open access publication, it must be made available in the Digital Commons. The DigitalCommons@UConn is a digital repository of the intellectual output of the University of Connecticut's faculty, staff, and students. It can accommodate virtually any publication, presentation, or production in electronic format. DigitalCommons@UConn represents a way for the UConn community to organize, store and preserve its research in a single unified location. It is made available through Digital Commons software, licensed by the University of Connecticut Libraries and powered by the Berkeley Electronic Press.