MacKenzie Smith
University Librarian
University of California, Davis
Ivy Anderson
Interim Executive Director
University of California, California Digital Library
The Pay-It-Forward project at the University of California (UC) is investigating the financial sustainability of the “Gold” model for Open Access (OA), in which journal publishers charge authors an Article Processing Charge (APC) to generate revenue instead of subscriptions. Large research universities in North America such as UC and its library partners (Harvard, Ohio State University, and the University of British Columbia) account for a large number of research articles each year, and we need to understand how that will change the costs associated with scholarly communication at our institutions, particular library budgets. The project has collected data on journal budgets and expenditures, publishing costs and APCs, attitudes about Gold OA of publishers and authors at various career stages, and authorship patterns at our institutions. We are using this data to create a financial model for Gold OA at research universities, and will report our findings to-date and planned project outcomes.