RE: A Useful Clarification of Harvard's OA Fund

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

At the moment it would seem that a surprising number of authors 
manage to pay APCs even if they see lack of funds as a barrier 
(SOAP survey). Yet they do not seem to me going to funds 
available from their institutions as much as one would expect. I 
suspect that most researchers squirrel money away and use it for 
this purpose instead of buying books, paying for travel etc but I 
do not know: I do not think anyone does.

However the point I want to make is that very few funders 
actually offer to pay for all papers coming from the research 
they fund. The researchers has to decide when they apply for a 
grant how much money they will need and I think (but am not sure) 
that many funders expect the money to be spent when the project 
"ends". It is like any other part of a "materials" budget.

But of course many papers resulting from the research will be 
actually submitted some time after the project has ended. 
Wellcome is different and I believe Howard Hughes is also. 
Wellcome will agree to pay APCs quite a while after the grant has 
finished and are very liberal in their help.

Therefore if a an institution really wants their researchers to 
publish in a mainstream OA journal they should perhaps not refuse 
funding to researchers with grants and (as suggested below) have 
a very non-bureaucratic stance in this complicated matter.

I am impressed that Tromso is willing to put its money where its 
mouth is.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
On Behalf Of Jan Frantsvag
Sent: 10 February 2011 22:13
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: SV: A Useful Clarification of Harvard's OA Fund

Hi Ann, David

I've been following this discussion for some days, and would just 
like to say something about our thinking.

At the University of Tromso we are setting up a fund to pay APCs 
for authors not having grants (it will go public in just some 
days). We at the University Library are going to administer this 
fund, and one of our principles is that we pay the whole cost, or 
nothing. If the corresponding author belongs to our university, 
we pay, otherwise we leave the cost for others. This is, we 
believe, the same policy as the University of Lund have. They are 
spending some USD 300,000 a year in their fund, so they should be 
listened to. We will be willing to hear arguments in special 
cases that we should pay APCs even if we don't have the 
corresponding author, if so, we will pay the whole APC.

Splitting bills is time-, and hence cost-, consuming. Let us use 
the money for APCs, not for internal administration. (I've had - 
in an earlier life -the responsibility of introducing electronic 
handling of incoming invoices at the Universities, and have seen 
how large the costs are for processing invoices, both incoming 
and outgoing.)

When enough institutions have set ut funds, APCs will be funded 
without major problems. - There is some way to go, of course!

Best,
Jan Erik Frantsvag
Open Access Adviser
The University Library of Tromso