The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) has introduced the ASPCA Open-Access Publishing Fund (OAPF) to promote the dissemination of impactful animal welfare research. The program provides funding to subsidize article processing charges for selected scholarly, peer-reviewed, open-access articles, with a maximum award of $5,000 per article. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis in the order they are received.

Eligible applicants must be U.S. or Canadian citizens or residents and can include independent researchers, members of public or private academic institutions, research organizations, animal welfare or human service organizations, and government agencies. Applicants must demonstrate the capacity to produce high-quality, publishable scholarly work that directly advances animal welfare issues within the U.S. context.

The eligible journals must be quality, peer-reviewed scholarly journals that allow immediate and unfettered open access to articles upon publication. Manuscripts must be substantially complete at the time of application and ready for submission within six months of receiving funding approval. Applicants cannot have already paid for publishing; funds will be paid directly from the ASPCA to the publisher.

Priority research areas include cruelty prevention and response, animal sheltering, applied animal behavior, increasing access to affordable veterinary care, community cats, equine welfare, and farm animal welfare. Each funded article must include an acknowledgment that the ASPCA provided open-access publishing support.

Applications require a brief explanation of the funding need, journal selection rationale, information on authors and affiliations, a disclosure of prior research funding, the publication cost estimate, and a complete draft of the manuscript. Completed applications must be submitted through Airtable in one session, as the platform does not allow saving and resuming later. For inquiries, applicants can email with the subject line "OAPF inquiry."