During the month of Open Access week (October 23-29, 2017) we will be highlighting a number of guest posts from University of Iowa Faculty and Staff who have personal experience making their work Open Access. We appreciate their contributions. 
The second guest post is by Carrie Figdor, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Opening doors through open access
The UI Open Access Fund enabled me to publish an article on science journalism at Frontiers in Communication, a fairly recent addition to the Frontiers-in family of online journals, many of which have very high citation rates. This article has since become the third most-viewed article to date of that journal (despite the relative recency of its publication) and the journal editors have approached me to curate a Research Topic in this area. Since its publication I have also been invited to contribute to a forthcoming volume with Oxford in media ethics. I have no idea whether that invitation is attributable to the publication of this paper, but it is undoubtedly true that Open Access publication vastly increases potential exposure due to its immediate accessibility to anyone for free. This is extremely important in a context of very high priced academic journals that get their content for free from academics.
Working with the Libraries’ open access fund staff to obtain funding was a scholar’s dream. The application was straightforward, my DEO, David Cunning, was very supportive, the funds were granted swiftly, and payment to the journal was taken care of quickly and efficiently. Once my article was accepted, the rest was easy.