Northern Illinois Univ. Libraries Launches Open Access Fund

Northern Illinois Univiverswity (NIU)NIU Libraries has launched a pilot Open Access Fund that will provide small grants to faculty and graduate students to help defray the upfront costs associated with open access publishing.

Grappling with the costs for expensive journal subscriptions, a number of universities nationwide, including Harvard and MIT, are promoting open access publishing. It provides unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed journal articles, thus broadening access to scholarly research.

The NIU Open Access Fund seeks to advance the use of open access as a means of distributing the research and creative work of the Northern Illinois University community. University Libraries Dean Patrick Dawson says open access will expose the scholarly and artistic work of the NIU community to a much larger audience...