Good news for Wake Forest researchers: the WFU Open Access Publishing Fund is open again for FY27!

After closing early in 2026 due to high demand, ZSR Library and the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs (ORSP) have refreshed the fund and are ready to support Reynolda campus faculty publishing open access articles, books, and book chapters this year.

What’s Open Access?

Open access (OA) publishing makes research freely available to anyone, anywhere, with no subscription, paywall, or institutional login required. Instead of costs being borne by readers and libraries after publication, OA shifts the model so that the work is open from the moment it’s published.

The knowledge generated by our amazing research community shouldn’t be accessible only to those with the ability to pay for access. Supporting OA publishing is one way ZSR puts Pro Humanitate into practice.

What the Fund Covers

The fund covers open access publishing charges — commonly called APCs, or article processing charges — for peer-reviewed work published in fully open access venues. Funds can cover publication of journal articles, book chapters, and even entire OA books. It doesn’t cover indexing fees, image rights, or other supplemental costs, and applications must be submitted before publication; we can’t reimburse after the fact.

Who’s Eligible?

• Reynolda Campus faculty members (Wake Forest Health Sciences faculty are not eligible)
• Journals must be fully open access and either listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or published by an OASPA member. Hybrid journals — those that are subscription-based but offer paid open access options — are not eligible.
• No embargoes. Your work must be available immediately upon publication, and authors must retain copyright.
• The applicant must be the lead or corresponding author.

Funding Limits

• Up to $3,000 for OA journal articles or book chapters
• Up to $5,000 for OA books
• One funded request per fiscal year per faculty member

How the Costs Are Shared

The OA Fund is a shared effort. In most cases, ZSR Library covers two thirds of the APC. If a project is supported by a federal grant that does not cover APCs, ORSP and ZSR will each cover one third. The remaining third will be requested from the author’s department. This structure is designed to reflect university-wide support for open access and our faculty’s research contributions.

If you have a grant that already includes funding for APCs, those funds must be used first — the OA Fund can’t duplicate coverage.

Check Our Read & Publish Agreements First

Before you apply to the fund, it’s worth checking whether your target journal is covered by one of ZSR’s read-and-publish agreements. These are deals we’ve negotiated directly with publishers, and several of them waive APCs entirely for WFU faculty.

If your journal is covered under one of these agreements, you may not need the Open Access Publishing Fund at all, or you may only need it to cover what the discount doesn’t. For more details and a list of participating publishers, see our OA Support at WFU guide

Ready to Apply?

Ready to publish open access? Apply to the Open Access Publishing Fund

Questions? Reach out to Kyle Denlinger, Head of Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication, at denlinkd@wfu.edu