Open Scholarship at Brigham Young University

“Open scholarship” is an evolving phenomenon with many manifestations, including the provision of free public access to information. Of particular relevance to the BYU community is open access (OA) publishing, for which the most common funding mechanism is the article publishing charge (APC), whereby an author pays a fee designed to cover publishers’ costs that subscription fees would otherwise cover. The growth of this model has led many faculty to wonder what options might be available to underwrite APCs, or whether expectations for publication might shift in response to the changing publishing landscape.

BYU continues to monitor the changing landscape of scholarly publishing, and may take an institutional position on related issues from time to time. For now, individual faculty and their academic units are best positioned to assess circumstances in their fields and disciplines and make publishing decisions that they believe will best achieve their goals and advance BYU’s mission. When making these decisions, individuals and units should consider factors such as the following:

• Mandates from research sponsors
• Availability (or lack thereof) of funding from grants and other sources
• Quality and reputation of publishing outlets
• The author’s career stage and research goals
• The ability of different venues to provide broad benefit to the Church and the world
• Strengths and potential pitfalls of different licensing options
• Each academic unit’s responsibility to set academic standards for its faculty, in furtherance of BYU’s unique mission

While the BYU Library does not offer direct financial support to external OA publishing programs or to researchers seeking to publish on an OA basis, faculty librarians stand ready to offer expert assistance in navigating the current scholarly publishing landscape and critically evaluating options.

Approved by BYU administration March 2025