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Publication Subvention Support Program

(Updated January 2025)

The Provost’s Office and the Office of Research and Innovation (ORI) have established a program to provide faculty with subvention for scholarly publication costs, up to $1,500 annually. These subventions are intended to ensure that works of significant scholarly value by UMass Dartmouth faculty can be published. Subventions are considered particularly appropriate in cases where publication costs are unusually high due to artwork, maps, photographs, permissions and other special production elements. The publication must be a scholarly work of which the faculty member

  1. is the first or sole author,
  2. shares authorship with a student who is the first author,
  3. has contributed more than 50% effort, or
  4. is a co-editor and sharing publication expenses with the other co-editor(s).

The applications are accepted on a rolling basis with the FY 2025 deadline of May 9th, 2025 and second Friday in May thereafter. Funds must be expended before the end of the fiscal year (June 30th) in compliance with university end of year fiscal deadlines and procedures. Funding will be allocated on a first come, first served basis until funding is depleted.

Application rules and eligibility

  • Requesting author must be currently appointed at UMass Dartmouth as a tenured or tenure-track faculty member. Faculty with grant or startup funds are eligible to apply, but they will be expected to share the costs.
  • Specifically excluded from eligibility for support are emeritus, adjunct, research, or teaching faculty members, as well as faculty members whose contracts will not be renewed for the following year and faculty members who plan to resign their appointments at the end of the current year.
  • The publication must make a scholarly contribution to the author’s field of expertise. Non-academic or creative works outside the faculty member’s area of expertise are not eligible.
  • UMass Dartmouth faculty who wants to make their scholarly work available to all readers immediately upon publication may apply to cover reasonable publication fees required by many open access publication venues. The venue of publication must employ standard measures of academic rigor, and the funds requested must support immediate, permanent open access upon publication. Open-source fees are allowed only for journals that offer no free or reduced cost option for publication.
  • Artwork, maps, photographs, permissions and other special production elements are allowed; indexing and copy editing for completed works accepted for publication are allowed.
  • Costs of doing research (such as travel to archives) or other activities required for completion of a project are not eligible. Subvention grants are only available for accepted works to defray publication costs.
  • Self-published works are not eligible. In no case may the faculty member be an agent or employee of the publisher. A faculty member who has or will receive a cash advance from the publisher is not eligible for publication subvention support
  • Publication of textbooks, translations of previously published works, updated editions or republication of previously published works are not eligible. 
  • Subvention support will not be provided for reimbursement of costs for a previously published work or the purchase of copies/reprints by the author.
  • If the book or article is not published, the author and publisher agree to reimburse the funds back to the University.
  • Subventions will not be provided to reduce the market price of a manuscript/book accepted for publication.
  • The author and publisher of the work must agree to acknowledge support from the subvention grant in the acknowledgement section of the work with the following wording: This work was supported, in part, by a grant from the Office of the Provost and the Office of Research and Innovation at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Review criteria

Faculty who have received funding from this or other support programs from the Office of Research and Innovation and Provost’s office in the past are eligible for funding, though quality proposals from faculty that have not had previous funding will be prioritized. Proposals will be evaluated on several criteria, including:

  • the intrinsic merit of the project;
  • the quality of the journal or publisher;
  • the relevance of the work to the applicant’s area of scholarship;
  • outcome of the applicant’s prior internal and external awards. Funding decisions will be made by the Office of Research and Innovation. The ORI reserves the right to require further information before deciding on an application. All funding decisions are final.

Instructions

Applicants are encouraged to write their proposals with the educated layperson as the target audience. Applications should include the following:

  1. Application Narrative: the application narrative should explain the nature of the published work and address the criteria for review above.
  2. Curriculum Vitae.
  3. Formal letter of acceptance from a publisher. In the case of books, a copy of the book contract is required.
  4. Proof from the publisher that the publisher requires a subvention of a specific amount and justification for that amount.
  5. Faculty with grant or start-up funds should provide a brief report on current balances and plans for spending the available funds if s/he wouldn’t agree to share the cost.

Applicants may submit the items listed via InfoReady at the Internal Awards page.