Open Access

We are pleased to announce that the Open Access Publication Fund is accepting applications for FY 2025-2026.

Thanks to the generous support of our funding partners (Bell Library, Division of Research & Innovation, the Office of the Provost, and the Harte Research Institute), $70,000 is available this year to support TAMU-CC authors publishing their work through gold open access.

Please read through the guidelines before applying to the fund as some funding rules have been updated.

If you have questions, please contact ScholarlyCommunications@tamucc.edu.

TAMU-CC Open Access Publication Fund

About the Open Access Publication Fund

The Mary and Jeff Bell Library, the Division of Research and Innovation (R&I), the Office of the Provost, and the Harte Research Institute (HRI) are proud to support Open Access (OA) through the Open Access Publication Fund. The purpose of the fund is to underwrite publication charges for scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and books published in fully Open Access publications.
 

Open Access Publication Fund Application

To be eligible for funding, you must be able to answer yes to the following questions:

1. Are you a Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi faculty member or full-time researcher? Read more about Author Eligibility.
2. Is the work a peer-reviewed journal article, book chapter, or book?
3. Has the work been submitted for publication to a fully open access publisher at this time?
4. Will the work be Open Access immediately upon publication?
5. Does the publication venue (for journals or books) provide Open Access to all peer reviewed contributions? Read more about Publication Eligibility.
6. Is the Journal indexed in a reputable index or index specific to your discipline? Some examples include: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and Web of Science. Please see the Predatory Publishing guide for more information.
7. Will approved funds be used solely to help underwrite processing charges related to publishing in the venue?
8. Can you confirm that you do not have another source of funding – including grants – to cover publication processing charges? Read more about Funding Rules here.
9. Do you agree to have the work added to the TAMU-CC Institutional Repository after publication? Read more about the TAMU-CC Institutional Repository.

If you have questions, please contact scholarlycommunications@tamucc.edu. If you are ineligible for funds but still wish to publish Open Access, consider submitting a pre-print to the TAMU-CC Institutional Repository.

Questions regarding the Fund may be emailed to the Scholarly Communications Team. Questions about payments should be directed to Bell Library's Library Business Affairs.

Eligible authors are current members of the faculty or full-time researchers at TAMU-CC. Applicants may include eligible coauthors in their application, please read Funding Rules, Caps, and Coauthor Distribution for further information.

• Applying authors must submit their ORCID id. If you do not already have one, it takes about 30 seconds. Learn more. 
• Faculty may apply for funding at the time that they submit their article to a journal, rather than at the time of acceptance. If the journal rejects the submitted article, funding is returned. The author must notify us that the article has been rejected and re-apply for funding of the article.
• Faculty may only apply for funding once per quarter, and only if they have no other works pending acceptance for publication.
  • For the purposes of the fund, quarters are defined as:
•   Q1: September–November
•   Q2: December–February
•   Q3: March–May
•   Q4: June–August
• Through our agreement with Wiley, two gold open access publications can be funded each calendar year, regardless of the journal chosen or the APC list price. Authors cannot have publications funded in a gold open access journal through this agreement with Wiley and the Open Access Publication Fund in the same quarter. Learn More.

Eligible works include peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books accepted for publication after September 1, 2025. (For anything accepted before September 1, 2025, please contact scholarlycommunications@tamucc.edu.)

To be eligible, the publication venue must be fully Open Access. The publisher must make their entire publication freely available online, i.e., all articles in a journal or chapters in a book are Open Access. “Hybrid” Open Access publication venues and publication venues with delayed Open Access models are ineligible.

• Full Open Access: Eligible. Publishers providing immediate and free online access to all peer-reviewed material they publish.
• “Hybrid” Open Access: Ineligible. Publishers charging subscription or access fees for published material unless authors pay to make only their work freely available in the venue. Many consider this practice to be “double-dipping:” If the university pays for a faculty member’s work to be published Open Access in a journal that is not fully OA, but the library also subscribes so that the works not published OA are accessible, the university ends up paying twice.

Resources

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) maintains a list of open access journals, many of which will be eligible.
• HowOpenIsIt? provides information about evaluating Open Access in publication venues.
• Guidelines for Evaluating OA Publications provides resources and tools from our Evaluating OA Publications Guide including Think. Check. Submit that helps researchers identify trusted journals in their research.

Predatory Publishers

Due to a rise in applications to journals that may be considered predatory, we are asking authors to search for the journal in which they would like to publish in reputable indexes or indexes appropriate to their discipline. Please check in resources such as Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and Web of Science to see if the journal is indexed there. Refer to the Predatory Publishing guide for more information.

The Open Access Publication Fund is a limited resource intended to support Open Access publishing at TAMU-CC. Funding for publications that comply with the author and publication eligibility criteria will be distributed on a first come, first-served basis, according to the funding rules.

Each application to the Open Access Publication Fund is for one publication only; applications for more than the cost of publishing the specific article in the application will not be approved.

Approved funds may only be used to cover publication processing charges for the single publication on the application that was approved.

Approved funding applications are for a specific article and cannot be transferred to another article. If another article is accepted while the approved article is still in review, a new application must be submitted in accordance with funding guidelines.

Funds are awarded to publish the article, not awarded to the author, and are disbursed by the library directly to the publisher. Researchers are expected to first request Open Access funding for publication from their funding agencies, use indirect costs or startup funds, or access other available funds. If other funding sources are unavailable, applications to the Open Access Publication Fund are welcome.

Eligible authors may receive a maximum of $3,000 per fiscal year.

• This is a cumulative total: it may be split across multiple applications for as long as funds are available.
• This is a yearly cap: it applies to the fiscal year in which an application is submitted.
• The caps do not roll over to future years.
• Faculty may only apply for funding once per quarter, and only if they have no other works pending acceptance for publication.
• Authors that have had a gold open access publication funded through the Wiley agreement in another quarter will have that amount taken out of their cap when applying to the fund based on the per article cost shown in the Wiley Journal Finder.

Approved applications will receive a maximum payment of $3,000 to support the publication of the work.

• The $3,000 cap applies regardless of the number of eligible coauthors
• Payment will be distributed as equally as possible among eligible coauthors and subtracted from each author’s maximum allowance.
• If the requested funding exceeds the invoice amount, the excess amount is returned to the fund.

The final published version of submitted works supported by the Open Access Publication fund will be deposited into TAMU-CC’s Institutional Repository. Faculty are encouraged to self-submit their work, both published and unpublished scholarly work. Scholarly work can be submitted through the TAMU-CC Repository Non Exclusive License Agreement and Submission Form.