11/18/15 sry local
HAYS, Kan. -- Deborah Ludwig, dean of Forsyth Library at Fort Hays State University, recently collaborated with librarians from the University of Kansas and KU Medical School to publish a peer-reviewed practice article, "Campus Open Access Funds: Experiences of the KU 'One University' Open Access Author Fund" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

The article describes the librarians' experience creating and implementing a pilot project that provides funds to authors whose work is published in commercial journals that charge fees for open access distribution. The pilot project was launched at the University of Kansas in 2012 as a two-year project. Additional funding was provided to the libraries for two additional years beginning in the fall of 2014.

Authors who received funding were required to deposit a copy of their work in the universities' institutional repositories for open dissemination. Ludwig previously served as assistant dean and associate librarian with the University of Kansas Libraries.

"Open access publishing is an increasingly important strategy to heighten the visibility and accessibility of faculty scholarship and to reduce costs for students and for universities," said Ludwig. "Fort Hays State University is in the process of implementing the FHSU Scholars Repository."

The repository will allow faculty, staff and student authors to deposit scholarship and creative work as open resources when permitted by copyright and license permissions. Forsyth Library is working with faculty on an initial set of projects to showcase the capacities of the repository with a full launch expected in the fall of 2016.