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VT Open Access Subvention Fund: Guidelines

VT Libraries offer an open access (OA) fund to subsidize article processing charges (APCs) for scholarly, peer-reviewed OA journals. This guide includes the request form, fund guidelines, and links to finding OA journals and publishers' OA policies.

VT OASF Guidelines

  • NOTE:  OASF funds are spent for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.  Please check back on July 1.  Our suggestions are to 1) check the discounts tab on this guide to see if your journal/publisher is covered; 2) check with your department/college/institute to see if funds are available; and 3) use the open access policy to make the accepted version of your article available at no cost.
  • Funds are available to underwrite article processing charges (APCs) for scholarly peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication in open access journals.
  • All Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and students who are currently enrolled or employed at VT are eligible.
  • OASF support is not available if a grant supported the research upon which the article is based.
  • Hybrid journals are not supported (that is, subscription journals offering an OA option), to avoid double charges to the library, and because hybrid journal fees are generally higher on average than those for fully OA journals.  Please note that you can decline the OA option, and provide free, no-embargo access to your accepted version by using Virginia Tech's Open Access Policy.
  • The funding limit is $1500 per article.  The fund can now cost-share with departments.
  • Authors are limited to $3000 in funding per fiscal year (July-June). For papers with multiple Virginia Tech co-authors, the OASF still subsidizes the same total amount of up to $1500 per article but the support is pro-rated among each of the VT authors for the purposes of calculating amounts towards the annual limit for individuals. For example, an article request for $1500 with 3 Virginia Tech co-authors would be pro-rated at $500 each.
  • The OA journal's publisher must be a member of the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) or comply with a similar Code of Conduct.
  • OA journals should be registered in an open access directory such as the Directory of Open Access Journals or Sherpa/Romeo.
  • Funding is significantly reduced from previous years and will be disbursed to authors upon approval and in the order in which they were received.
  • Invoices for funded articles must be received by the Libraries' head of acquisitions within 45 days of the award notification. Otherwise, the funds will be returned to the OASF and the author(s) must reapply. If your article’s publishing charges are waived by the journal, or the OASF award is no longer needed for any reason, please let us know so we can release those funds for other authors.
  • Please note that no-cost, embargo-free open access for accepted versions of scholarly articles is available to all VT researchers thanks to Virginia Tech's Open Access Policy, approved by the Board of Visitors on March 22, 2021.  Accepted versions are available in VTechWorks, which receives over 3,000 downloads per day from around the world.
  • Check the Discounts tab above for publisher agreements, some of which cover all of a journal's APC.
  • Questions about the fund can be sent to oasf-g@vt.edu.

Guidelines edited Nov. 16, 2023 (PY)