What is the OAPF?

The UMass Lowell Open Access Publishing Fund (OAPF) is a partnership between the Office of Sustainability and the UMass Lowell University Library. The OAPF is designed to engage, encourage and enable UML authors to publish their research and scholarship within the open access (OA) community, to link that scholarship to classroom teaching and learning at UML and to increase research on sustainability topics. 
Each academic year, the UML OAPF is available to support researchers as funding allows. The OAPF underwrites reasonable article-processing charges (APCs) or similar publishing support for open access journals when funds are not otherwise available.  Authors can receive up to $1,500 for OA publishing support for articles that have been or will be published that academic year (July 1 – June 30). Submissions will be reviewed by a committee of faculty and staff from Sustainability, the University Library, and other departments. The review committee will review applications on a first-come, first-served basis and efforts will be made to distribute funds to multiple departments. Applications will be accepted, and awards will be made until funds are exhausted. 

OAPF Goals

The goals of the OAPF are to: 
  • Encourage open access publishing and expand the number of UML authors publishing in OA locations, by supporting faculty, students, and staff who may wish to publish in open-access journals but lack other sources of funding for OA publishing support. 
  • Increase access to and use of the published OA research in UML classes to reduce costs of required reading materials. 
  • Additional consideration will be given to research that: 
    • engages with topics in sustainability, defined broadly across all disciplines, and/or
    • engages students as research collaborators. 

OAPF Guidelines

Eligible applications will support open access publication of completed manuscripts that have been reviewed and accepted for publication in that academic year. This can include: 
  • Scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles. 
  • Chapters or contributions to peer-reviewed scholarly books (not textbooks). 
  • Scholarly peer-reviewed books. 
Eligible publications and publishing venues must be fully and immediately open access. Publications in “hybrid open-access” (which also charge subscription fees) or “delayed open-access” journals and monographs are not eligible. 

Application Details

Each year $6,000 will be available in the OAPF. All applications must meet the following eligibility criteria to receive up to $1,500: 
  • The applicant is a current UML faculty member, instructor, post-doctoral researcher, staff member, or graduate student.  Emeritus faculty members are eligible if the research was completed while they were still affiliated with UML. 
  • The applicant must be the primary or corresponding author. 
  • The manuscript must have been accepted and proof of acceptance must be provided with the application. 
  • Authors that have alternative funding available through grants are not eligible for reimbursement. 
  • Manuscripts must be deposited with the University Library for preservation in the institutional repository. 
  • The manuscript must be a contribution to a book or a scholarly article. 
  • The journal or book must be fully open access and listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) / Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).  If the journal or book is too new to be listed in either directory, the publication must be completely DOAJ / DOAB compliant.  
  • The publication must allow authors to retain copyright. 
  • The publication must allow author to use Creative Commons (or equivalent) licenses at no additional cost. 
Awards will be granted to those applicants whose scholarship best reflects the OAPF goals. Authors are limited to one award per year. 

Administration of Award

The Office of Sustainability administers the program funding and will transfer funds to the successful applicant’s department. Each department can arrange the payment to the OA journal in whatever method they choose. Each application will identify the department financial staff member to coordinate funding. The deadline for invoice submission for fund transfer is the last day of May.