Prioritizing sustainable and equitable open access infrastructure: Closing the SFU Library Open Access Fund
Abstract
The SFU Library Central Open Access Fund was established in 2010 to provide financial support for SFU authors to publish their work in open access journals. What began as a modest yet meaningful contribution to incentivize OA publication and offset the costs of Article Processing Charges (APCs) has, over the past 15 years, become inadequate to account for the significant changes in OA costs. Average APC costs increased from 1200 Canadian Dollars in 2010 to 3000 Canadian Dollars in 2024; and, in hindsight, we can see clearly that APCs perpetuated inequities and enriched the major publishers: their profits increased as they pivoted their business models to OA (Butler et al., 2023). To address these issues, in Fall 2023, SFU Library convened a group of faculty and librarians to review the sustainability of the current model of the OA Fund. The task group recommended a phased closure of the Fund, and advocated for the library and university to prioritize models that are more sustainable and equitable. In this lightning talk, we will outline the review process, our considerations, and ultimately reflect on how closing the OA Fund will allow us to prioritize sustainable and equitable open access infrastructure.
Full text
1st Canadian Conference on Open Science and Open Scholarship Montreal, QC | October 9 & 10, 2025 Prioritizing sustainable and equitable open access infrastructure: Closing the SFU Library Open Access Fund Alison Moore (presenter), Ioana Liuta, Nicole White, & Mar González Palacios Simon Fraser University Library Lightning talk speaking notes [Slide 1] Hi everyone. I’m Ali Moore, Digital Scholarship Librarian in the Research Commons at Simon Fraser University. I’m speaking to you today on behalf of a team of librarians at SFU. I’d like to start by thanking the organizers for placing my talk right after Kate’s, because as I think you will see, our two topics align really nicely. You’ve just heard a compelling account of why we should support open infrastructure, and I’m going to briefly share a case study about what this can look like in action by talking about how we are prioritizing sustainable and equitable open access infrastructure by closing the SFU Open Access Fund. [Slide 2] The SFU Central Open Access Fund was started in 2010 by SFU Library to support and encourage SFU authors to publish in Open Access (OA) journals that require authors to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs). The fund has always exclusively supported gold open access journals, which is to say, journals where all of the content is free to read immediately upon publication. Hybrid journals have never been eligible for OA Fund support. The SFU Open Access Fund is one of the longest running open access funds in Canada. [Slide 3] When the OA Fund opened in 2010, it was a modest yet meaningful contribution to incentivize OA publication and offset the costs of APCs, in response to demand from researchers that they needed additional financial support to start publishing their work open access. Over time, in response to increased demand and rising costs, the funding amounts and eligibility criteria for the OA Fund had to be reduced in an effort to sustain this popular resource. The OA Fund went through a significant review in 2017 with the launch of the SFU Open Access Policy and again in 2023, with the most recent review committee recommending a phased closure. In many ways, this closure was bringing us in line with other academic libraries in Canada. [Slide 4] Given that it is so rare to have 15 years of open access fund data, I thought that you might find it interesting to hear some high-level stats about our fund. In total, from 2010 – 2025, the OA Fund paid just under $2.9 million dollars in APCs to support the publication of just over 1500 OA
articles. The number of articles supported year over year varied according to eligibility and awareness. When the fund first opened, we supported 32 articles for just over $37k, but at its peak in 2022, the fund supported 155 articles for around $320k. And again, while those numbers are high, it’s important to consider them in context – in 2022 at its height, the APC costs represented approximately 2.8% of the overall Library collections budget. That is substantial, but really a small fraction of our overall expenditure. Finally, one number that we have really been keeping our eye on over the past 15 years is the average cost of an APC. It has steadily risen from ~$1200 CAD in 2010 to ~$3000 CAD in 2024, reflective of just how lucrative this financial model has been for publishers. [Slide 5] And to return to Kate’s point about supporting open infrastructure for scholarly publishing, I think it’s really time for us to consider where our money is going. Over the past 15 years, while we have supported a huge range of venues - over 90 distinct publishers, in fact – there have also been some main publishers that we have been supporting again and again. This chart, which depicts just the top 10 publishers, is a good illustration of the range, and reminds us to consider who is benefitting from APCs. [Slide 6] So, moving forwards, there is a need for systems change. Paying for APCs is financially unsustainable. APCs perpetuate inequities and are enriching the major publishers. There is enough money in the system to make changes, and incremental changes over time make a difference. At SFU Library, we commit to engaging in a phased redirect of funds toward strategic, sustainable OA initiatives and continued support of open infrastructure, including institutional repositories, diamond OA, memberships, subscribe to open, etc. Some of the ways that we are already doing this including support for Érudit and arXiv.org, among others. And we are always looking for suggestions and are open to hearing recommendations for open infrastructure. [Slide 7] Finally, I’d just like to say that open scholarship is always the work of a collective, and in this case I have been so privileged to work with so many amazing colleagues. I want to conclude by offering my sincere thanks and appreciation for the contributions of our OA Fund administrators, members of the review task groups, and to everyone who supported this work over the past 15 years. I’m looking forwards to what’s to come.