Re: Gold OA funds as generalised "subvention funds"?

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

This kind of fund exists at a number of universities already. 
Cornell has had its Hull Fund for subsidizing all sorts of 
scholarly work for many years. Stanford and Penn State instituted 
junior faculty startup grants years ago where the individual 
faculty member gets a lump sum and then can use it for any number 
of scholarly purposes, such as travel to conventions, journal 
article fees, subsidies for monographs, etc. However, the 
practice is by no means universal, and there is a long way to go 
before it can be said that universities generally support the 
system of scholarly communication in anything like equal ways.

Sandy Thatcher


At 7:11 PM -0400 6/7/10, Richard Poynder wrote:
>
>But perhaps a more salient point made by Sarah Pritchard in the
>Information Today interview is that university presses -
>particularly those focused on the humanities - invariably have to
>be subsidised in order to be able to carry on publishing. In this
>regard Sarah Pritchard makes an interesting suggestion about the
>use of the so-called Gold OA funds that are being created at a
>growing number of universities
>(http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_funds).
>
>Her suggestion is that these funds should be used not just to
>support author-pays OA, but as more generalised "subvention
>funds". As she puts it, "[T]he model I see is one in which you
>have a pool of money that can be considered research funds. These
>funds might be used for page charges in a commercial subscription
>journal, they might be used as a subvention for a university
>press, or they might be used to pay OA charges. All three of
>those things are basically undergirding the same process: getting
>the material out there."
>
>http://www.infotoday.com/it/jun10/Poynder.shtml
>
>Richard Poynder