Are you an early career researcher in the arts or humanities looking to publish your work open access? UC Libraries is extending its existing pilot fund to help cover the costs.
What Is the Fund?
The UC Libraries Arts & Humanities Open Access Fund is a pilot program that pays article processing charges (APCs) for eligible early career authors publishing in arts and humanities journals. Funding is provided via the California Digital Library, not campus budgets, and covers the full cost of open access fees for qualifying articles.
Why Does This Matter?
Existing UC-wide open access publishing agreements already cover about 55% of UC publishing activity, but these agreements tend to benefit authors in STEM fields. Arts and humanities scholars, especially those early in their careers, are less likely to have grant funding to pay OA fees out of pocket. This fund is designed to close that gap.
Who Is Eligible?
The fund is open to early career authors, including:
Pre-tenure faculty
Graduate and undergraduate students
Postdoctoral researchers
Other non-tenured early career authors
Eligible authors must be the corresponding author on the article and affiliated with one of the participating campuses: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz, or San Francisco. Each author may receive funding for one article during the pilot period.
Which Journals Qualify?
The fund covers articles published in arts and humanities journals on a pre-approved list of more than 3,600 titles. These are non-profit or society publisher journals not already covered by an existing UC open access agreement. If your target journal is not on the list, there may still be options, and you can contact UCLIB-ARTS-HUMANITIES-OAFUND-L@listserv.ucop.edu to ask.
How Do You Apply?
Simply fill out the online application form. You will receive confirmation that your application was received, and a decision will be made within five business days. You can apply before your article is accepted, but you will need to submit proof of acceptance before receiving reimbursement. Articles must be accepted for publication after November 21, 2025 to be eligible. Articles published prior to this date are not eligible. The pilot program runs until June 30, 2027.
Date/Time: Thursday, February 19, 2026, 11:00am–12:00pm Location: Zoom. RSVP.
If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn the basics of how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. We’ll also highlight a new integrated tool to ensure that your materials are accessible to users with disabilities.
Recent books published open access by UC Berkeley authors with support from the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative
UC Berkeley Library continues to support a variety of ways our authors can participate in open access (OA) publishing to contribute to UC’s research and teaching mission. This mission includes the practice of “transmitting advanced knowledge” by helping faculty, researchers, and students create and share their scholarship with peers, and the world.
While the system of scholarly publishing includes traditional publications such as peer-reviewed academic articles, conference proceedings, data sets, and more, read on below for some updates on how UC Berkeley Library—and the broader University of California system—is supporting authors in publishing open access books.
Berkeley’s Support for Open Access Books
While many UC authors create academic journal articles as an output of their research, others focus on producing a scholarly book. Book authors can realize a variety of benefits with open access publishing, including increasing the reach of their scholarship, building relationships within their academic community, garnering more citations, making their scholarly books more affordable for students, improving accessibility for print-disabled users, and more.
UC Berkeley is supporting authors who wish to publish their books open access. The library provides funding assistance and access to publishing platforms and tools for UCB authors to make their books OA.
Berkeley Research Impact Initiative
The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) is a program to foster broad public access to the work of UCB scholars by encouraging the Berkeley community to take advantage of open access publishing opportunities—including books and journal articles. BRII is the local open access fund that helps defray the costs associated with publishing open access books and research articles. For books, BRII can contribute up to $10,000 per book for it to be published open access. Below are recent UCB-authored books published with the assistance of BRII.
Understanding Child Welfare, by Jill Duerr Berrick, Richard P. Barth, Melissa Jonson-Reid, Antonio R. Garcia, Johanna K.P. Greeson, John Gyourko, and Brett Drake
Springer Open Access books
Since 2021, the UC Berkeley Library has had an institutional open access book agreement with Springer Nature. The partnership provides open access funding to UC Berkeley affiliated authors who have books accepted for publication in Springer, Palgrave, and Apress imprints. This means that these authors can publish their books open access at no direct cost to them. The agreement covers all disciplines published by Springer. All the books are published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license for free access and downloading.
Pressbooks platform & workshops
The UC Berkeley Library hosts an instance of Pressbooks (https://berkeley.pressbooks.pub/), an online platform through which the UC Berkeley community can create open access books, open educational resources (OER), and other types of digital scholarship.
To learn more about how to create and publish your own eBooks on Pressbooks, join our upcoming demo and workshop on February 19, 2026. RSVP
Broader UC efforts for OA book publishing
A current goal of the UC Libraries is to strategically extend its support for OA book publishing. The UC is contributing to several open access book publishing ventures within the monograph publishing community, including Opening the Future, MIT’s Direct to Open, the University of Michigan Press’ Fund to Mission, the Open Book Collective, and more. These models secure investments from libraries and other stakeholders, and agree to publish some or all of their frontlist books open access, with limited or zero direct cost to the authors. The backlist books are made accessible to participating institutions.
The UC is also pursuing three OA book publishing pilot projectswith University of California Press, Duke University Press, and Oxford University Press. The efforts “will enable UC authors publishing books with select university presses to choose open access at no cost to them, and will also begin opening previously published books by UC authors.”
Finally, the UC Libraries has released a new report called Advancing Open Monograph Opportunities at UC. It outlines a “values-based framework, key recommendations, and practical strategies for advancing OA monograph publishing” across the UC system. Four recommendations presented in the report include:
Strategic investment in BPC-based OA monograph initiatives that directly support authors and publishing programs aligned with UC research and teaching.
Support for Diamond OA and free-to-read models that remove both author- and reader-facing fees while advancing bibliodiversity, multilingual scholarship, and community-led publishing.
Strengthened partnerships with university presses, recognizing their central role as trusted stewards of peer-reviewed scholarship and their importance in the transition to open models.
Investment in open, community-owned infrastructure and high-standards OA initiatives that support discoverability, metadata quality, preservation, and long-term sustainability.
Read the full report in eScholarship (UC’s institutional repository).
If you’re a UC Berkeley community member and interested to learn more about how you can create and publish an open access book, visit our website or send an email to schol-comm@berkeley.edu.
Date/Time: Thursday, February 19, 2026, 11:00am–12:00pm Location: Zoom. RSVP.
If you’re looking to self-publish work of any length and want an easy-to-use tool that offers a high degree of customization, allows flexibility with publishing formats (EPUB, PDF), and provides web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be great for you. Pressbooks is often the tool of choice for academics creating digital books, open textbooks, and open educational resources, since you can license your materials for reuse however you desire. Learn the basics of how to use Pressbooks for publishing your original books or course materials. We’ll also highlight a new integrated tool to ensure that your materials are accessible to users with disabilities.
This post was written by Tim Vollmer, Anna Sackmann, and Elliott Smith
U.S. Federal agency logos, public domain.
Are you a UC Berkeley faculty or researcher publishing results arising through federal grant funding?
Starting in 2026, research funded by all federal agencies will be made freely and immediately available to the public, with no embargo. Some agencies have already updated their public access plans, including the National Institutes of Health, which went into effect on July 1, 2025. All federal agencies must update their public access policies no later than December 31st, 2025.
Join UC Berkeley Library staff on Wednesday, January 14, 2026 from 1:00-2:00 pm on Zoom for an overview of federal agency public access policies affecting research publication and data, and what you need to do as an author.
We’ll cover essential requirements for a variety of federal agency funders such as the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and more. We’ll unpack publication and data deposit procedures, review publisher challenges to compliance, and highlight related UC open access publishing support.
Participants will leave with clear takeaways on what they need to do to meet public access requirements, the tools they can utilize, and where to find ongoing support.
The workshop presentation will be recorded and distributed to registrants afterward.
This post was written by Tim Vollmer, Anna Sackmann, and Elliott Smith
U.S. Federal agency logos, public domain.
Are you a UC Berkeley faculty or researcher publishing results arising through federal grant funding?
Starting in 2026, research funded by all federal agencies will be made freely and immediately available to the public, with no embargo. Some agencies have already updated their public access plans, including the National Institutes of Health, which went into effect on July 1, 2025. All federal agencies must update their public access policies no later than December 31st, 2025.
Join UC Berkeley Library staff on Wednesday, January 14, 2026 from 1:00-2:00 pm on Zoom for an overview of federal agency public access policies affecting research publication and data, and what you need to do as an author.
We’ll cover essential requirements for a variety of federal agency funders such as the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and more. We’ll unpack publication and data deposit procedures, review publisher challenges to compliance, and highlight related UC open access publishing support.
Participants will leave with clear takeaways on what they need to do to meet public access requirements, the tools they can utilize, and where to find ongoing support.
The workshop presentation will be recorded and distributed to registrants afterward.
Hear from a panel of experts—an acquisitions editor, a first-time book author, and an author rights expert—about the process of turning your dissertation into a book. You’ll come away from this panel discussion with practical advice about revising your dissertation, writing a book proposal, approaching editors, signing your first contract, and navigating the peer review and publication process.
This workshop will provide you with practical strategies and tips for promoting your scholarship, increasing your citations, and monitoring your success. You’ll also learn how to understand metrics, use scholarly networking tools, and evaluate journals and publishing options.
This workshop will provide you with practical guidance for navigating copyright questions and other legal considerations for your dissertation or thesis. Whether you’re just starting to write or you’re getting ready to file, you can use our tips and workflow to figure out what you can use, what rights you have as an author, and what it means to share your dissertation online.
Hear from a panel of experts—an acquisitions editor, a first-time book author, and an author rights expert—about the process of turning your dissertation into a book. You’ll come away from this panel discussion with practical advice about revising your dissertation, writing a book proposal, approaching editors, signing your first contract, and navigating the peer review and publication process.
