The University of Illinois at Chicago Library faculty have approved an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

"An open access policy ensures the broadest possible access to the fruits of research and scholarship, and important goal of academic research libraries. We hope this action by the Library faculty will serve as a model to other college faculties at UIC," said University Librarian Mary Case.

The policy requires Library faculty to grant UIC a non-exclusive license to make copies of their articles available publicly in the UIC's open access institutional repository, INDIGO. The policy also encourages faculty to retain the copyright to their work. . . .

Drafted by the Scholarly Communication Committee, the policy also exhibits flexibility toward faculty pursuing tenure. The committee, understanding the importance for such faculty to publish in peer-reviewed journals that can require an author to sign over copyright to publish, will grant case-by-case waivers. When a faculty member must sign over copyright, he or she is encouraged to deposit a draft of their article in the UIC open access institutional repository, noted [Sandra] De Groote.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73. | Digital Scholarship |

According to a tweet today by Geneva Henry, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at Rice University’s Fondren Library, Rice University’s Faculty Senate has approved an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the Rice University Open-Access Mandate Position Paper (2/12/2012):

To assist Rice in distributing the scholarly publications, as of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the publication at no charge to a representative designated by the Provost's Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. The Provost's Office will make the scholarly publication available to the public in an open-access repository, the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive. Upon request, the scholarly publication will not be made available to the public for an agreed upon embargo period.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

SPARC has released "You've Signed on to the Boycott, Now What? A SPARC Guide for Campus Action."

Here's an excerpt:

In light of the recent, failed attempt to abridge access to scholarly articles via the Research Works Act (RWA), a growing number of researchers have expressed their frustration with the status quo in scholarly publishing, and are interested in learning about concrete actions that they can take to effect positive change. SPARC has prepared this resource for our members, to help you to engage your faculty and researchers, and talk with them about options for taking such action.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73. | Digital Scholarship |

SPARC has released an updated version of "Open Access Funds in Action," which describes "North American funds in action across a variety of characteristics, including fund size, sponsorship, requirements, and more."

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship |

The World Bank has adopted an Open Access Policy that puts its works under a CC BY 3.0 License.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Two years after opening its vast storehouse of data to the public, the World Bank is consolidating more than 2,000 books, articles, reports and research papers in a search-engine friendly Open Knowledge Repository, and allowing the public to distribute, reuse and build upon much of its work—including commercially. . . .

The repository and Creative Commons licenses are part of a new open access policy that takes effect on July 1 and will be phased in over the next year.

Read more about it at "World Bank to Introduce Open Access Policy."

| Works about Open Access by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. | Digital Scholarship |

The Creative Commons has released The Power of Open.

Here's an excerpt:

Creative Commons began providing licenses for the open sharing of content only a decade ago. Now more than 400 million CC-licensed works are available on the Internet, from music and photos, to research findings and entire college courses. Creative Commons created the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. More importantly, millions of creators took advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity.

The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators. Some are like ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative news organization that uses CC while partnering with the world’s largest media companies. Others like nomadic filmmaker Vincent Moon use CC licensing as an essential element of a lifestyle of openness in pursuit of creativity. The breadth of uses is as great as the creativity of the individuals and organizations choosing to open their content, art and ideas to the rest of the world.

Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73.

College & Research Libraries has released an preprint of "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities?"

Here's an excerpt:

An increasing number of higher education institutions worldwide are requiring submission of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) by graduate students and are subsequently providing open access to these works in online repositories. Faculty advisors and graduate students are concerned that such unfiltered access to their work could diminish future publishing opportunities. This study investigated social sciences, arts and humanities journal editors' and university press directors' attitudes toward ETDs. The findings indicate that manuscripts which are revisions of openly accessible ETDs are always welcome for submission or considered on a case by case basis by 82.8% of journal editors and 53.7% of university press directors polled.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

UNESCO has released Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access by Alma Swan.

Here's an excerpt:

The Policy Guidelines can be used by individuals as a basic text on Open Access and related policies. While we recommend that beginners to the world of Open Access should read it from cover to cover, people having some understanding of OA may like to start reading from any of the sections. Decision-makers, administrators and research managers should focus on Sections 8 and 9 that capture all relevant issues of OA policy development. At the end of this document, you will find examples of different types of OA policies (Appendix 1), and three policy templates (Appendix 2) to choose and adopt.

| Works about Open Access by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. | Digital Scholarship |

The University of California's University Committee on the Library and Scholarly Communication has released "An Open Access Policy for the University of California: Materials for Discussion and Consultation."

Here's an excerpt:

This document is intended to spur discussion about a university-wide open access policy at the University of California. The Faculty of the University of California (coordinated by the University Committee on Libraries and Scholarly Communication) has created a model version of this policy, included here, along with many frequently asked questions about the issue. This is not an official proposed policy, but a document for discussion and debate. UCOLASC hope to make UC faculty broadly aware of the issues, and to help answer questions about it before the official policy is drafted and circulated in the spring of this year (2012).

Read more about it at "UC Open Access Policy to Be Debated."

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

SURF has released an English synopsis of The Dutch Research Repositories Monitor 2011.

Here's an excerpt:

This study measures the effects of the two networks of repositories [DARE programme and SURFshare programme], charts the current situation, and explores possible scenarios for the future. It is in part a follow-up to the study Dutch Academic Repositories SURFshare Baseline Survey [Nederlandse Academische Repositories, SURFshare Nulmeting] of March 2010. That study was a baseline survey of the Dutch universities’ repositories carried out at the end of 2008 and with additional research in the first half of 2009. Important statistics in the study concern the 2007 calendar year. In other words, despite being published in 2010, the results were in fact a number of years old, namely from the start of the SURFshare programme.

Read more about it at "Open Access to Dutch Research Stagnating."

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

In "FPRAA Takes Center Stage at Congressional Hearing, Andrea Higginbotham summarizes the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight’s recent hearing on Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests.

The hearing also featured testimonies from two members of scholarly societies—Fred Dylla (the American Institute of Physics), and Crispin Taylor (the American Society of Plant Biologists) who expressed concerns with various components of FRPAA. They argued that the current system is working well, and worried that their societies—which are currently funded almost entirely from revenue from subscription based publications—would see a significant decrease in revenue if FRPAA were to be enacted. . . .

Dr. Stuart Shieber, Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication at Harvard University, argued that open access to research is an intrinsic public good. He quoted Thomas Jefferson, noting "the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people."

Shieber suggested that traditional publishing market is a dysfunctional one—library budgets for serials continue to shrink while journal profit margins increase. He spoke to the growing body of research demonstrating the economic growth occurs from increased innovations from openly accessible research. He discussed several forward-thinking open access publishing models, and focused on the need for policies that facilitate full utility of digital information in order to enable scholarship and research.

Read more about it at the previous DigitalKoans post, "House Hearing on Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests" (lists testimony and other documents from the hearing).

Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73.

The House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing today on Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests.

Here are the documents that have been released for this hearing:

• Hearing Charter [overview]
• Opening Statement by Andy Harris (R-MD), Chairman, Subcommittee on Investigations & Oversight
• Testimony by H. Frederick Dylla, Executive Director and CEO American Institute of Physics
• Testimony by Elliot Maxwell, Project Director for the Digital Connections Council, Committee on Economic Development
• Testimony by Crispin Taylor, Executive Director, American Society of Plant Biologists
• Testimony by Stuart Shieber, Director, Office for Scholarly Communications, Harvard University
• Testimony by Scott Plutchak, Director, Lister Hill Library at University of Alabama at Birmingham

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |