Open Access Publishing Fund

Due to budget restrictions, fewer OA Publishing awards will be available in FY26. Thus, the OA Publishing Fund will be piloting a new application review process this year to create more equitable disbursement to those authors with the greatest need.

Awards will be granted twice this fiscal year. Applications for the Fund will be accepted through 9/12, considered by the Review Panel, and status notifications sent by 9/19. The second round of application reviews will take place in January for all applications received through 1/9. Status notifications will be sent by 1/16. All awarded funds must be paid to publishers by June 30, 2026 or the award will expire. All eligible applications that did not receive awards in the initial review period will be automatically rolled over to the 2nd review taking place in January.

PLEASE NOTE: Applications will be accepted and considered only after a manuscript has been submitted to an approved journal. If you need to verify that a journal is eligible for funding, send an email to Jaime Schumacher with a link to the journal.

To promote equitable distribution of funding, the Review Panel will prioritize applications that have the following attributes:

Applicant is an enrolled Graduate Student, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Non-Tenured Faculty, or Non-Tenure-Track Member of a Research Team; Tenured Faculty Members are also welcome to apply
First-time applicant or applicant from a department or program not previously supported through the Fund

Other author, fee, and journal/publisher eligibility criteria remain the same (see below).

Goals of the Fund

Support NIU affiliated authors who wish to publish in open access journals that require article processing fees.
Support the transition to sustainable scholarly publishing models.
Increase equitable access to information.
Provide greater visibility and accessibility of NIU scholarship.
Encourage authors to retain copyright of their work.

Funding

Administered by the University Libraries and generously funded by NIU’s Division of Research and Innovation Partnerships (RIPS) and the University Libraries.

Author Eligibility

Northern Illinois University faculty and research staff, including non-tenure track faculty and enrolled graduate students.
Articles with multiple authors are only eligible where the lead author is an NIU affiliate.
Funds are limited to one grant per article and one grant per author each fiscal year (July – June).

Fee Eligibility

This fund is intended for peer-reviewed articles by authors who do not have access to funds for OA publishing fees from other sources, or to supplement funds for OA publishing where not fully covered by other sources.
Only those fees associated with OA publishing are eligible for reimbursement. Examples of excluded costs are reprints, color illustration fees, non-open access page charges, administrative charges and other fees.
To include as many authors as possible while covering typical costs, the maximum amount that can be awarded per article, per fiscal year (July - June) is $3000 USD.
Disbursement is determined on a first-come-first-served basis and is dependent upon availability of funds and the application's compliance with all eligibility criteria.

Journal/Publisher Eligibility

To be considered eligible for OA Publishing Funds, a journal/publisher must meet the majority of the following requirements:

Journal has clearly defined peer-review process on its website.
Fully Open Access (that is, it does not charge readers or their institutions for access to the peer-reviewed articles that it publishes).
Journal identifies a clear and standard article fee schedule on its website.
Publisher is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, or adheres to the majority of its membership criteria.
Preferably, the journal should be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (unless the journal is too new for DOAJ eligibility)

Currently, all of the major open-access publishers satisfy these conditions, including BioMed Central, Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Hindawi, as do many other smaller open access publishers.

Review Process

Once an application for open access publishing is submitted, it will be reviewed by representatives from the funding divisions (see Funding) to determine that all eligibility requirements are met. If additional vetting of a journal or publisher is required, the author’s department chair may be consulted. Upon approval, the applicant will be notified, via email, of the award along with instructions for processing the payment of OA publication fees.

Deposit in Huskie Commons

Acceptance of Open Access Publishing Funds requires the submission of the supported article to Northern Illinois University's digital repository, Huskie Commons, within three months of publication for its long-term preservation and collocation with other author, department, college, and university scholarship. Please note: Funding does not imply an endorsement of any journal, nor does it imply an assessment of the quality or research value of any article.