Paywall Payout: A Three Year Review of the SOML Open Article Fund

In 2022, the School of Medicine Library launched the Open Article Fund as a way to support faculty, residents, and fellows with their scholarly activities when submitting open access publications that would otherwise be ineligible for funding through the University Libraries fund which limited recipients to tenure-track faculty. After feedback from the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine Office of Research, The pilot fund was structured after the University Libraries funds with some modifications including awarding $2,000 instead of $1500 towards a publication, allowing for publications in hybrid journals, and requiring multi-author team submissions. The fund was initially supported by $30,000 in collections funds after undergoing a series of resource cancellations. Over time the fund has undergone changes on availability, eligibility and other funding sources to help offset costs. This conference poster presents preliminary findings of three fiscal years that the fund has been opened (FY23: 2022-2023, FY24: 2023-2024, and FY25: 2024-2025) as well as lessons learned in offering a fund to a relatively new medical school that is still establishing its scholarly and research priorities.