After University of Kansas Approves Open Access, SPARC Pushes for More
First public university in U.S. to adopt OA; will use KU Scholar Works
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 8/13/2009
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- Harvard was pioneer in 2008
- KU respository will be default
- SPARC offers guidance on OA campaigns
In June, the University of Kansas, Lawrence, became the first public university in the United States to adopt an open access (OA) regarding scholarly research, and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is offering resources to encourage other universities to take the plunge.
Under the faculty-initiated policy, faculty members will send digital copies of their articles to KU ScholarWorks, created in 2005, which houses more than 4400 articles. Professors can seek a waiver via a process to developed by a Senate task force in the coming academic year.
“Granting the university the right to deposit a copy of scholarly journal articles in an open digital repository extends the reach of the scholarship, providing the widest possible audience and increasing its possible impact,” said Lorraine J. Haricombe, dean of libraries.
SPARC effort
Noting that many faculty members and administrators remain unfamiliar with OA, SPARC now offers a suite of web-based tools concerning issues like copyright, journal sustainability, disciplinary differences, and author rights.
Publicly available tools include the SPARC guide to implementing a campus open-access policy; background on the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy (passed in February 2008), the first in which U.S. faculty voted unanimously for OA as a default; and videos from the SPARC-ACRL forum on the Harvard policy.
Also available by request are two documents based on previous OA campaigns: “Campus open-access policy ‘Choice Points’,” which concerns policy options and recommended steps; and “Responses to common misconceptions about campus open-access policies.”
A group of expert advisers is also available as a resource. “It has become increasingly clear to me that the many efforts on university campuses to draft, promote, and implement open-access policies can benefit from the experiences of others who have been through the process,” said Stuart Shieber, Director of Harvard’s Office of Scholarly Communication.
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