Rice Author Open Access Support: Library Funding

This guide provides an overview of the ways Rice-affiliated authors can publish open access (OA) with all or some of the publishing charges covered by Fondren Library.

Why publish open access?

Publishing open access allows anyone to access and read your work, increasing its visibility and potential impact.

One of the core values of libraries is equitable access to information, making them natural advocates for open access. Fondren Library supports open access models that ensure that money invested makes a widespread impact: any reader with an internet connection can access the work, not just those affiliated with Rice University.

To learn more, reach out to openaccess@rice.edu and see Fondren's Open Access Values Statement.

There are multiple paths to open access

Open access shifts publishing away from a subscription model, but there are still costs to journal production. To cover these costs, publishers employ a number of different OA models. One model is the article processing charge (APC), a fee charged to the author upon acceptance of their article for publication. While Fondren supports many different OA models, this guide focuses on APCs and monograph subventions. Most deals cover "gold" and/or "hybrid" open access titles. "Gold" refers to a journal that is fully OA. "Hybrid" refers to a journal that includes both closed (subscription) and OA content.

Although this guide focuses on funding to publish your work open access in scholarly journals or monographs, you can also make your work OA by making your work available in an institutional repository like the Rice Research Repository (R-3). For more information about R-3, please see this guide.

There are also a number of OA journals that do not charge authors a publishing fee. To find a journal in your discipline, search the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), filtering by "Without fees."

Current Fondren support for open access fees

Fondren has entered into several agreements with publishers to support Rice-affiliated authors who want to publish their journal articles open access. Under these agreements, the library pays the article processing charge (APC) for eligible articles.  The library has also negotiated discounts for OA articles with several publishers. See below for details.

For more information about Fondren's support for OA books and book chapters, please see the OA Book Subventions tab of this guide for more information.

The current list of publishers with whom Fondren Library has agreements is in the table below.  For publishers we do not have agreements with, authors can request funding through the OA Journal Author Fund.

Not all journal titles qualify for inclusion in the library's agreements. Some publishers, like Cambridge University Press, provide an eligibility checker tool to confirm that your journal is covered by the agreement. If you are unsure whether your journal is covered, please contact the library at openaccess@rice.edu.