Today the LYRASIS Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP) announces a new round of funding opportunities to support open access publishing by scholarly journals. The journals seeking investments in OACIP round two include Algebraic Combinatorics, History of Media Studies, and Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. 

OACIP, a joint project between LYRASIS and Transitioning Society Publications to Open Access (TSPOA), is a community-driven framework that enables multiple stakeholders (including libraries of all types, academic departments, and funding agencies) to efficiently and strategically evaluate and collectively fund open access content initiatives. OACIP doesn’t just bring together investment opportunities in one place, but also it provides important and consistent information about those opportunities to support informed and principled investing. It achieves this through criteria-based questionnaires to which participating publishers must respond. In this way, OACIP helps provide tailored match-making between nonprofit scholarly publishers who are seeking financial investments from funders (like libraries) who are looking to support OA publishing projects.

OACIP launched “phase 1” in 2020, piloting the program with two journals: Environmental Humanities and Combinatorial Theory. Both journals met their fundraising goals to sustainably publish open access for the next five years. 

We are building off the pilot’s success by launching a second round of journals for investors like you to support. 

Phase 2 Participating Journals

Algebraic Combinatorics

Algebraic Combinatorics (ALCO) is a peer-reviewed open access mathematics journal that published its first issue in January 2018. It is a specialty journal in the burgeoning field of algebraic combinatorics, spanning across and intricately linking several areas of mathematical research. ALCO was created after the entire editorial board of Springer-Nature’s Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics announced their intention to resign. The current journal is owned by mathematicians, dedicated to free dissemination of research, and committed to Diamond Open Access publishing, with no fees for authors or readers. ALCO published 5 issues in 2018 and 6 issues in both 2019 and 2020, and 4 issues so far in 2021. It seeks to raise a total of $125,000 to cover its next five years of publishing (i.e. publishing costs of $25,000 per year). These funds will be used to cover costs such as copy editing and reasonable editor compensation.

History of Media Studies

History of Media Studies (HMS) is a new, peer-reviewed, scholar-run open access journal founded to augment understanding of the ways that media have been conceived, investigated, and studied around the world. The journal is published by mediastudies.press, a scholar-led, diamond OA (i.e. never a fee to authors or readers) nonprofit publisher launched in 2019. HMS is low-volume by design, aiming to publish up to 10 full-length articles per year on a rolling basis, in addition to shorter contributions. The journal seeks to raise a total of $62,500 to support five years of its publishing (i.e. $12,500/year in publishing costs). Funds will be used to cover professional copy-editing/proofing, software, platform hosting, memberships, and other infrastructure and overhead. 

Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

The Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication (JLSC) is a peer-reviewed open access journal with no article processing charges. The journal is particularly interested in the intersection of librarianship and publishing and the resulting role of libraries in both content dissemination and content creation. Publishing since 2012, JLSC became a publication of the Iowa State University (ISU) Digital Press in July 2021. The journal typically publishes between 25 and 30 full length articles and five to ten shorter reviews and editorials per year. JLSC seeks to raise a total of $90,000 to sustain five years of its publishing (i.e. $18,000/year in publishing costs). Funds will be used to cover annual costs, including copy editing, layout, accessibility checking, and hosting.

How You Can Invest

An open access scholarly publishing transformation can happen only with broad community support. OACIP allows you to invest your limited funds wisely to OA journals and programs that align with your own institution’s values. 

You can support the journals participating in OACIP by visiting the Open Access Community Investment Program webpage. There you can review the criteria responses provided by the journals, evaluate whether the investment opportunity makes sense for your organization, and commit funds. 

The investment window is open now through July 31, 2022.

Follow OACIP on Twitter to stay up to date on OACIP activity.