LSU Libraries is piloting an Open Access (OA) Author Fund to provide LSU researchers and authors with funds needed to publish their work in fully open access journals that require author fees. The fund, totaling $30,000, will be available over the 2018 calendar year through a rolling process. Faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and staff on the LSU Baton Rouge campus with limited sources of funding for open access publication charges are encouraged to apply. Applicants are reviewed within 10 business days. Yaping Xu, an LSU graduate student in the Department of Geography and Anthropology and the first awardee of the Open Access Author Fund, received funding for his article "Standardized Soil Moisture Index for Drought Monitoring Based on Soil Moisture Active Passive Observations and 36 Years of North American Land Data Assimilation System Data: A Case Study in the Southeast United States" in Remote Sensing, an academic journal of Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). Xu shared, "This is an open access journal which has very good reputation in my field. However, I don't have funding for the publication. I submitted the application to the Open Access Fund, and luckily got the fund." For more information and access to the application, visit https://lib.lsu.edu/oaf.