OAK Fund Annual Report: 2015-2016

Abstract

The Open Access to Knowledge Fund (OAK Fund) at Texas A&M University is a program for underwriting publication fees for scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and monographs in fully Open Access publications. The OAK Fund was established in 2013 to help fulfill Texas A&M University’s commitment to the “Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity.” The goals of OAK Fund at Texas A&M University are to support and encourage: (1) Texas A&M University faculty, research staff, and graduate students (as of fiscal year 2015/2016) who lack another source of funding to publish in Open Access venues; (2) innovative scholarly publishing that takes advantage of digital networking technologies for distribution and Open Access; and (3) greater public access to Texas A&M University research and scholarship.

The OAK Fund has been available to Texas A&M University authors for three years. In the 2015/2016 fiscal year, the Vice President for Research (VPR) and the Texas A&M University Libraries committed $35,000 and $50,000 to the fund, respectively. For the first time, additional funds were allocated to support graduate student authors; the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies (OGAPS) and the VPR each committed $2,500. This document reports on outcomes of the 2015/2016 OAK Fund program.