To pay associated publishing costs with Open Access (OA), academic libraries are providing researchers affiliated with the university the funds necessary to publish in OA journals. Structured to reimburse the author fees for a researcher’s accepted manuscript to an OA journal; these funds support the dissemination of scholarship and promote the benefits of OA. With numerous academic libraries in the United States operating a fund to pay publishing costs, librarians are adapting their strategies for addressing popular demand from researchers by reevaluating submission criteria; specifically prioritizing based on need for young researchers in adjunct positions or doctoral candidates and reducing financial expenditure per researcher to expand allocation to additional people.

The essay seeks to effectively identify and compare strategies used by libraries throughout the United States. Beyond analyzing the structure of author funds, the essay explores the value of such programs in promoting OA values of not only free to read, but free to publish. Asking the question, are libraries best suited to expend resources by paying publishing fees and does it achieve its purpose of promoting OA journals? Overall, the essay outlines the role of OA in expanding the potential for libraries to develop its role in scholarly publishing; particularly by promoting researchers’ publications in OA journals using author funds.

Published in Learning Exchange, a newsletter of the Learning Round Table of the American Library Association, the article details an ASU Libraries and Office of Graduate Education collaborative program. Occurring during the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Research Coalition (SPARC) sponsored Open Access (OA) week, the program endeavored to inform the students of the benefits of OA and promote the library’s digital repository to graduate students. The program discussed the publication of students’ theses and dissertations in the library’s digital repository and dispelled associated myths of its impact on future research potential. The article is designed to inform and inspire information professionals in creating similar programs. © Copyright 1997-2014, American Library AssociationThis document may be reprinted and distributed for non-commercial and educational purposes only, and not for resale. No resale use may be made of material on this website at any time. All other rights reserved.

Limiting the immediate access to content, embargoes are designed by publishers to ensure the economic sustainability of their business by requiring users to rely on the purchase of licensing agreements via subscription models. Comparatively, Open Access models which eliminate traditional pay-walls, are gaining prominence for immediate access and reduction of copyright barriers between readers and articles. Wishing to facilitate expanded access to scientific research, the White House sought to implement policy for the timely release of government funded research to the public. For proponents of Open Access, legislation by the House of Representatives in the FIRST Act imposed significant barriers to the public’s timely access of government funded research. Alongside rising subscription costs and increasing advocacy for Open Access, recent actions by the United States and European Union to reduce embargo periods for scientific research have brought to the forefront questions of properly defining the duration of embargoes for publicly funded research.

Keeping Up With… is an online current awareness publication from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) featuring concise briefs on trends in academic librarianship and higher education. Each edition focuses on a single issue including an introduction to the topic and summaries of key points, including implications for academic libraries. © Copyright 1997-2014, American Library AssociationThis document may be reprinted and distributed for non-commercial and educational purposes only, and not for resale. No resale use may be made of material on this website at any time. All other rights reserved. || Historically, approaches to collection development in libraries relied on the subjective determination of librarians or outside vendors to select the material most suitable to address patron needs. Favoring broad strokes, acquisition policy relied on major publishers and sought to cover general subject areas. Several factors prompted a shift in approach to collection development, including reductions to staffing and budgets, but more importantly technological advancements and the proliferation of e-books caused the reevaluation of the resources patrons accessed and whether the collection accomplished its goal of satisfying their needs. The practice of patron driven acquisition (PDA) refines the broad strokes of acquisition to directly address the demands of patrons while managing costs by purchasing high use material, renting sparsely used titles and paying nothing for titles with no demand.

PDA involves the inclusion of bibliographic records to the catalog for titles the library does not own and permits the patron an opportunity to initiate a purchase. Beyond the practical implications of managing costs and liberating staff time, the PDA model provides patrons easier and quicker access to the widest range of information possible. The service model of populating a collection to protect against the possibility of patrons requiring access is increasingly unsustainable. Although not without its challenges, allowing the patron to provide a collaborative role with librarians in developing a collection serves to manage costs and streamlines the process of creating a collection which best addresses the needs of a constituency.