William H. Mischo
Head, Grainger Engineering Library Information Center and Berthold Family Professor in Information Access and Discovery
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Thomas H. Teper
Associate University Librarian for Collections and Technical Services and Associate Dean of Libraries
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A great deal has been written in the last several years about open access (OA) publishing in academic settings, both Green and Gold. In particular, the Pay It Forward (PIF) project and the OA2020 initiative focused on the feasibility of transitioning to a Gold OA environment supported by article processing charges (APCs). Several studies pointed out that faculty in research 1 (R1) universities tend to publish in Gold OA journals that carry APC charges. Yet, the institutional investment in OA publications and APCs remains difficult to identify and assess. APCs are often paid through a variety of sources, ranging from author discretionary and grant funds to institutional subvention pools. These APC expenditures form a shadow scholarly resources acquisitions budget, with funding typically not coming from library budgets. This presentation provides a quantitative assessment of one R1 institution’s level of publication in open access publishing venues. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign employs a SciVal PURE researcher profile system called Illinois Experts. The authors examined 27,300 journal articles from 2013 to mid-2018 contained in Illinois Experts. The number and percentage of publications appearing in Gold APC journals and other OA venues was calculated using scripts that searched against the DOAJ database and the UnPaywall platform. The total APC costs over the six-year period were calculated and the average APC charge was determined. The presentation will report these results.
