Prioritizing sustainable and equitable open access infrastructure: Closing the SFU Library Open Access Fund

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.