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Securing Open Access Funding for Projects in the Humanities

Funding Sources for Open Access Publishing

Open Access (OA) is critical to ensuring the accessibility of innovative research to scholars around the world; however, it is not always accessible to all. Recently the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced that governmentally funded research must be made OA after publication as of 2026. This follows a series of transformative agreements between publishers and European institutions to follow recommendations made by the Plan S coalition.

While much attention has been given to how OA will impact STEM fields, less information is readily available for how Humanities and Social Sciences researchers can securing open access funding to make their research readily available and comply with funder guidelines. 

We have started putting together a list of some of the organizations and institutions that support Open Access in the Humanities and Social Sciences:

Funding Agencies 

Many funding agencies provide general support and funding specifically for OA publication fees. These OA funding agencies include: 

 

Institutional Open Access Funds 

Many institutions have set up open access funds to support the publication of open access articles by their researchers. We recommend consulting with your institution to check funding opportunities.

 

National Open Access Funds 

These funds are typically administered by a consortium of institutions and provide support for your publication of open access publications by institutions.

 

External Grants 

You can apply for grants from external organizations, such as foundations or charitable trusts, to support the publication of your work in open access form.

  • Wellcome Trust - Supports researchers in pursuing research that ‘takes on important questions relating to life, health, and wellbeing, with creative approaches that push boundaries.’
  • National Institutes of Health (NIH) - Offers a number of funding grants for biomedical research with the aim of improving health and quality of life.
  • DeGruyter - Certain publishers also provide grants to support the dissemination of research in OA format. De Gruyter is one such publisher who supports this initiative.

 

Alternative Options to Publish Open Research

Preprints

  • arXiv - You can also consider self-archiving your work in open access repositories, such as institutional repositories or subject-specific repositories like arXiv. This allows the research to be freely available to anyone, although you may still need to pay a fee to the publisher for the initial publication in a journal.
  • rePEc - Research Papers in Economics (rePEc) seeks to disseminate innovative research in the field of Economics and related areas.
  • DePauw University - Open Access for Scholarly Publishing - DePauw University compiled a list of pre-print servers in the Social Sciences and Humanities that promote OA accessibility.

 

A final option involves requesting an APCs discount or waiver. Each journal has its own guidelines, however you can see one example of Taylor and Francis’s APC discount and waiver policy to learn more about what this process entails.

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