4 University Library’s Budgeting for Open Access Scholarship

In the fiscal year 2020-2022, the general collections budget for the University Library is $4,071,902. This funding is further subdivided up between electronic resources which can be databases, data sets, journal packages, journal subscriptions, one time purchased ebooks & streaming media and the purchase of physical materials which are generally DVDs, newspapers, print magazines & journals, and print books. For this fiscal year, PSU Library dedicated $112,090 of our overall budget towards open access models to support scholarship development on campus. This means we spend just under 2.8% of  the overall Library’s budget for general collections towards open access initiatives.

In 2017, David Lewis, Dean of the IUPUI University Library, issued a call for commitment to academic libraries asking them to commit 2.5% of their overall budget “to support the common infrastructure needed to create the open scholarly commons.”  Through the work we have done with our information resource management council and the work occurring from our Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Publishing unit, we have slightly exceeded this goal. Lewis argues that by making this commitment, academic communities and academic libraries stand a much better chance of growing and developing a new model of an open scholarly commons.

At the same time, University librarians recognize the disparities and concerns raised about solely supporting article publishing charges (APCs) enacted by legacy scholarly publishers in journals to which the University Library continues to pay subscriptions. These journals which are funded by both APCs and subscriptions are called hybrid journals. We’ve chosen to support paying APCs associated only with fully open access journals and open access initiatives coming from academic societies, scholarly community driven projects, small academic presses, and university presses. Below is a chart outlining how we have divided our expenditures among the various OA models currently available.

In the following chapters, we will outline both the budget allotted for each of these models and the providers we are currently working with to provide OA publishing opportunities to the Portland State University campus.