SFU has established a new fund to encourage SFU authors to publish in Open Access (OA) journals. These scholarly peer-reviewed journals are available on-line without a subscription fee, instead charging authors an "article processing" fee if their papers are published.

SFU’s new OA Central Fund will cover the processing fees for authors who lack other resources to cover the charges.

The new fund is a means of encouraging reforms in scholarly publishing, says Gwen Bird, associate university librarian, collections. Currently, the SFU library spends more than one-third of its collections budget on renewing e-journal subscriptions with just four commercial publishers.

"We’re going to put our money where our mouth is," says Bird. "We’re joining a growing movement worldwide."

The new fund is the latest in a series of SFU library initiatives to support open access. These include support for the Public Knowledge Project and its open- source software to improve management and reduce publishing costs, as well as SFU’s Institutional Repository where authors can share research output, including reports and raw data.