Q. I heard that UTA has some funds that professors can apply for to pay for open access manuscripts. Could you let me know if this is true and what process I need to go through in order to apply for this?

The Libraries embarked on the Go Open Fund as an experiment with our collection funds to support open access publishing. We are interested in building solutions for our scholars at a time when open solutions are needed to both accelerate research results and to disseminate published findings broadly. However, the program is not currently operating, as it is under review and evaluation.

While we don’t offer funding to support open access publishing, you can choose to deposit your manuscript into the institutional repository here at UTA, which makes it available to the public even when the article is published in a closed journal. To do so, you’ll need to ensure that you’ve retained the right to archive your work before signing a copyright agreement. If you’d like someone from the Libraries to review the agreement before you sign it, you can contact your subject librarian or email us at LIBRARY-SC@LISTSERV.UTA.EDU. In situations where the publisher requests that you transfer all of your intellectual property rights to them, it is still possible to negotiate retention of some of your rights—typically through use of an addendum (http://scholars.sciencecommons.org/). You can find additional information about the UTA Research Commons in our FAQ at http://hdl.handle.net/10106/25585.

If you’re still interested in publishing in PLOS ONE, a second option is to apply for publication fee support during the manuscript submission process. You can find additional information at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/publication-fees