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A Statistical Analysis of the Campus-Based Open Access Fund at Boston College

Abstract:In 2018, the Boston College Libraries launched a fund totaling $20,000 per semester to support affiliated researchers for their publications in open access (OA) journals. The BC OA Fund has experienced an increasing depletion rate as well as usage inefficiency. In this study, we seek to better understand these usage patterns by analyzing the OA applications received in the past three semesters. Specifically, we utilize two-sample t-tests and multiple linear regressions to perform a quantitative study of the depletion rate of the BC OA Fund and consider multiple factors affecting the efficiency of fund usage, including manuscript status, applicant's discipline, applicant's position, and co-authorship. Our results indicate that the OA Fund is becoming more popular within the BC community, especially among researchers in science and social science fields, and that a researcher's status as student and their co-authorship significantly improve usage efficiency.