Category: Open Access

The Association of College & Research Libraries has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

ACRL has long supported open access to scholarship as a central principle for reform in the system of scholarly communication. In ACRL's new strategic plan, the plan for excellence, the goal in the area of research and scholarly environment is that librarians accelerate the transition to a more open system of scholarship. Signing the Berlin Declaration is one way college and university libraries can demonstrate their intention to influence scholarly publishing policies and practices toward a more open system. Earlier this year, ACRL demonstrated its own commitment to open access by removing price barriers to the scholarly journal College and Research Libraries, which is now available at no charge from 1997 to the present through the publication website.

Here's an excerpt from the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (emphasis added):

Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:

1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

Bucknell University has adopted an open access policy..

Here's an excerpt:

The faculty of Bucknell University grant to Bucknell University limited use of their scholarly articles for the purpose of making these articles open access. Specifically, each faculty member grants Bucknell University a nonexclusive, paid-up, worldwide license for each of his or her scholarly articles for the purpose of making these articles openly accessible in an institutional repository, and grants Bucknell University permission to exercise all rights under copyright for this purpose, as well as to authorize other parties to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for income or profit. A scholarly article is defined as a peer-reviewed scholarly work published in a journal or in another format that a faculty member determines to be appropriate for his or her particular discipline.

The policy applies to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the author is a faculty member of Bucknell University except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy.

The license granted to Bucknell University by this policy will in no way interfere with the rights of a faculty member as the author of the work. Furthermore, the license granted to Bucknell University for an article will be automatically waived for any reason and without sanction at the sole discretion of the faculty member upon written/electronic notification to Bucknell University's scholarly communications officer.

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

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has adopted an open access policy. EPSRC is "the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences, investing more than £850 million a year in a broad range of subjects—from mathematics to materials science, and from information technology to structural engineering." Previously in the UK, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Natural Environmental Research Council, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council have adopted open access policies.

Here's an excerpt from the policy:

EPSRC Council has agreed to mandate open access publication, with the proviso that academics should be able to choose the approach best suited to their field of research. This mandate is now being implemented: EPSRC requires authors to comply with this mandate and ensure that all published research articles arising from EPSRC-sponsored research, and which are submitted for publication on or after 1st September 2011, must become available on an Open Access basis through any appropriate route. As now, publication costs may be recovered either as 'directly incurred costs' (if incurred before the end date of the relevant research project) or as indirect costs (and hence factored into the fEC indirect cost rate for the relevant research organisation).

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

Princeton University has adopted an open access policy. The faculty unanimously approved the policy on 9/19/11. Previously, open access polices have been adopted by seven schools at Harvard University, Emory University, Duke University, MIT, the University of Kansas, the University of North Texas, and other U.S. academic institutions and units.

Here's an excerpt from the policy:

1) The members of the Faculty of Princeton University strive to make their publications openly accessible to the public. To that end, each Faculty member hereby grants to The Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. This grant applies to all scholarly articles that any person authors or co-authors while appointed as a member of the Faculty, except for any such articles authored or co-authored before the adoption of this policy or subject to a conflicting agreement formed before the adoption of this policy. Upon the express direction of a Faculty member, the Provost or the Provost's designate will waive or suspend application of this license for a particular article authored or co-authored by that Faculty member.

The University hereby authorizes each member of the faculty to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles that are subject to the terms and conditions of the grant set forth above. This authorization is irrevocable, non-assignable, and may be amended by written agreement in the interest of further protecting and promoting the spirit of open access.

| New: Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

The faculty of the McIntyre Library at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have adopted an open access declaration.

Here's an excerpt:

It should come as no surprise that as librarians, we are not only committed to providing our student and researchers with open access to scholarly content, but equally focused on disseminating our own scholarship through open access options.

It is important, however, to point out that while we are committed to open access we also understand the costs associated with publishing scholarly works. It is our goal to work closely with publishers in order to carefully balance our rights as authors and copyright holders with the needs of publishers.

Be it therefore resolved that the undersigned faculty librarians of the W.D. McIntyre Library at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire are committed to open access and will strive to achieve open access for our own scholarly publications.

| Digital Scholarship |

Bhaskar Mukherjee and Mohammad Nazim have published "Open Access Institutional Archives: A Quantitative Study (2006-2010)" in the DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology.

Here's an excerpt:

Open access publishing is growing in importance, and, in parallel, the role of institutional archives has come to the forefront of discussion within the library community. The present study is an attempt to analyse the present trend of institutional archives worldwide. The factual data of each individual repository was collected from various Directories of Institutional Repositories by using survey method. Data was analysed in terms of quantity of institutional archives increased during last six years, countrywise contents of institutional archives, types of materials archived, subject coverage, software used, language of interface of institutional archives, host domains, and policy of institutional archives. The results of the study suggest healthy growth in terms of quantity of institutional archives' increase worldwide, however, the development is more prevalent in developed countries than developing countries. The subject analysis of the institutional archives indicates that the contributors in the field of health and medicine are more interested to submit their materials in repositories. Currently the institutional archives mostly house traditional (print-oriented) scholarly publications and grey literature, using DSpace software and most of these materials were of English language. However, the policy of content inclusion, submission and preservation is yet to be well defined in institutional archives.

| Digital Scholarship |

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has launched a €1 million fund to support open access journals.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has made one million euros available for setting up open access journals or for the conversion of existing journals to an open access model.

Providing financial incentives to open access journals is a new initiative within NWO's open access policy. Academic researchers from every discipline can now apply for one-off funding for setting up a new open access journal (maximum 45,000 euros per proposal) or for converting an existing journal into an open access model (maximum 22,500 euros per proposal). The deadline for submitting proposals is 4 October 2011. Further information about this funding instrument and the specific conditions that apply to it can be found at www.nwo.nl/openaccess.

| Digital Scholarship |

In "Suber: Leader of a Leaderless Revolution," Richard Poynder interviews prominent open access advocate Peter Suber.

| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

The University of Bath has adopted an open access mandate.

Here's an excerpt:

1. The University of Bath requires researchers to deposit full-text copies of their peer-reviewed journal articles and papers from published conference proceedings (subject to copyright provisions) in the University of Bath research repository, Opus4.
2. The mandate applies to items published after 1 June 2011. Publications from 2008 onwards should also be added in readiness for the REF.
3. The full-text of the paper and its details should be uploaded to Opus as close to publication as possible. See the Quick Start Guide for details.
4. Optional deposit of other research outputs such as book sections, reports, working papers and conference presentations is supported. These items will be identified as peer-reviewed or non-peer-reviewed as appropriate.

| New: Institutional Repository Bibliography, Version 4 | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

The Washington University Faculty Senate has passed an open access resolution.

Here's an excerpt from the minutes:

The Faculty of Washington University in St. Louis is committed to making its scholarship and creative works freely and easily available to the world community. Faculty members are encouraged to seek venues for their works that share this ideal. In particular, when consistent with their professional development, members of the Faculty should endeavor to:

Amend copyright agreements to retain the right to use his or her own work and to deposit such work in a University digital repository or another depository, which is freely accessible to the general public;

Submit a final manuscript of accepted, peer-reviewed publications to one of the University's digital repositories whenever consistent with the copyright agreement; and

Seek publishers for his or her works committed to free and unfettered access (often referred to as open access publishers) whenever consistent with his or her professional goals.

| New: Institutional Repository Bibliography, Version 4 | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Mikael Laakso, Patrik Welling, Helena Bukvova, Linus Nyman, Bo-Christer Björk, and Turid Hedlund have published "The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009" in PLoS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

Open Access (OA) is a model for publishing scholarly peer reviewed journals, made possible by the Internet. The full text of OA journals and articles can be freely read, as the publishing is funded through means other than subscriptions. Empirical research concerning the quantitative development of OA publishing has so far consisted of scattered individual studies providing brief snapshots, using varying methods and data sources. This study adopts a systematic method for studying the development of OA journals from their beginnings in the early 1990s until 2009. Because no comprehensive index of OA articles exists, systematic manual data collection from journal web sites was conducted based on journal-level data extracted from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Due to the high number of journals registered in the DOAJ, almost 5000 at the time of the study, stratified random sampling was used. A separate sample of verified early pioneer OA journals was also studied. The results show a very rapid growth of OA publishing during the period 1993–2009. During the last year an estimated 191 000 articles were published in 4769 journals. Since the year 2000, the average annual growth rate has been 18% for the number of journals and 30% for the number of articles. This can be contrasted to the reported 3,5% yearly volume increase in journal publishing in general. In 2009 the share of articles in OA journals, of all peer reviewed journal articles, reached 7,7%. Overall, the results document a rapid growth in OA journal publishing over the last fifteen years. Based on the sampling results and qualitative data a division into three distinct periods is suggested: The Pioneering years (1993–1999), the Innovation years (2000–2004), and the Consolidation years (2005–2009).

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