The Tisch Library Open Access Publishing Fund advances open access (OA) publishing at Tufts by providing financial support to School of Arts & Sciences and School of Engineering authors who want to publish their work open access but don't have other sources of funding to cover OA fees. We aim to increase access to research & scholarship created at Tufts, to support emerging researchers at Tufts, and to direct library collection funds towards making scholarship openly available. Browse publications funded by the award!
For the 2025-2026 academic year, up to $30,000 in total funds are available.
Eligibility for the 2025-2026 academic year
The Tisch Library fund is available to members of the Tufts community with a primary appointment in the Schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering.
- Undergraduate students who do not have a FRAC-eligible faculty co-author
- Graduate students who are an article's corresponding author
- Post-docs who are an article's corresponding author
- Eligible monograph or book chapter authors include faculty, students, and post-docs who are the publication's corresponding author
In order to allow as many authors as possible to share in the benefit of open publications:
- Applicants are limited to one award per academic year (July 1-June 30)
- No more than two members from the same lab or research group can receive an award each academic year (July 1-June 30)
- Authors with funding designated to cover publication costs such as author fees from grants, contracts, or other institutional funds (e.g., FRAC for faculty co-authors) are asked to use those funds first
- Students who have submitted an article for publication and applied for our award while still a Tufts student, but who have graduated by the time the article is published and payment is due may still receive funding up to one year after graduation. All other authors must have an active appointment with Tufts at the time payment is due to the publisher.
Eligible publications
- Articles published in journals that are 100% open access (i.e. "true" open access journals).
- Open access monographs and book chapters in fully open volumes will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Articles published in hybrid journals (where some articles are OA and some articles require a subscription) and book chapters published in hybrid books (where some chapters are OA and some require a purchase to read) are not eligible for this fund. If you're not sure if your journal is fully open access, check the Directory of Open Access Journals or get in touch with us and we'll take a look.
Fees covered
- 100% of the open access author fee in fully OA journals up to $3000 or up to $5000 for an open access monograph or book chapter
- Only one award per article will be given (i.e. two authors on the same article cannot each apply for $3000 to cover a $6000 fee)
- Reimbursement will cover only direct costs for open access publication (not the cost of reprints, color illustration fees, non-OA page charges, web hosting for self-archiving, etc.)
Fees associated with sharing data
Tufts students, faculty and staff can share data associated with articles at no cost in the Tufts Dataverse. Because our community has access to this resource, our fund does not provide funding for data sharing fees. If your journal has specific requirements that do not allow you to use Tufts Dataverse or another no-cost data repository, please get in touch with us to talk about options.
Application process
To apply, submit our application form. We will contact you by email, typically within 1-2 business days, to let you know the status of your application. Successful applicants will submit the invoice to us and we will pay the publisher directly.
A copy of the funded publication must be placed in the Tufts Digital Library, where it will be openly available alongside other Tufts scholarship. Deposit your article here.
Any questions?
Contact us with any questions about the Tisch OA award. We can also help you find an OA journal to publish in or evaluate an author's agreement.
For more information about choosing an open access journal to publish in or other ways to make your work openly available, visit our Scholarly Publishing guide.