Senate Approves Open Access Policy
The Academic Senate of the University of
California has passed an Open Access Policy, ensuring that
future research articles authored by faculty at all 10
campuses of UC will be made available to the public at no
charge. “The Academic Council’s adoption of this policy on
July 24, 2013, came after a six-year process culminating in
two years of formal review and revision,” said Robert Powell,
chair of the Academic Council. “Council’s intent is to make
these articles widely—and freely— available in order to
advance research everywhere.” Articles will be available to
the public without charge via
eScholarship
(UC’s open access repository) in tandem with their publication
in scholarly journals. Open access benefits researchers,
educational institutions, businesses, research funders and the
public by accelerating the pace of research, discovery and
innovation and contributing to the mission of advancing
knowledge and encouraging new ideas and services.
Chris Kelty, Associate Professor of
Information Studies, UCLA, and chair of
the UC University Committee on
Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC),
explains, “This policy will cover more faculty and more
research than ever before, and it sends a powerful message
that faculty want open access and they want it on terms that
benefit the public and the future of research.”
The policy covers more than 8,000 UC
faculty at all 10 campuses of the University of California,
and as many as 40,000 publications a year. It follows more
than 175 other universities who have adopted similar so-called
“green” open access policies. By granting a license to the
University of California prior to any contractual arrangement
with publishers, faculty members can now make their research
widely and publicly available, re-use it for various purposes,
or modify it for future research publications. Previously,
publishers had sole control of the distribution of these
articles. All research publications covered by the policy
will continue to be subjected to rigorous peer review; they
will still appear in the most prestigious journals across all
fields; and they will continue to meet UC’s standards of high
quality. Learn more about the policy and its implementation
here:
http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/openaccesspolicy/
"The UC Systemwide adoption of an Open
Access (OA) Policy represents a major leap forward for the
global OA movement and a well-deserved return to taxpayers who
will now finally be able to see first-hand the published
byproducts of their deeply appreciated investments in
research” said Richard A. Schneider, Professor, Department of
Orthopaedic Surgery and chair of the Committee on Library and
Scholarly Communication at UCSF. “The ten UC campuses
generate around 2-3% of all the peer-reviewed articles
published in the world every year, and this policy will make
many of those articles freely available to anyone who is
interested anywhere, whether they are colleagues, students, or
members of the general public."
The adoption of this policy across the UC
system also signals to scholarly publishers that open access,
in terms defined by faculty and not by publishers, must be
part of any future scholarly publishing system. The faculty
remains committed to working with publishers to transform the
publishing landscape in ways that are sustainable and
beneficial to both the University and the public.
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·
OA Policy approved by
the Academic Senate
·
FAQ
·
Press Release
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Waiver/embargo/addendum letter
generator
·
Chris Kelty’s video
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