Category: Open Access Scholarship

At its February 21 meeting, the Faculty Council heard a report on progress toward creat- ing an open access repository that would enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty authored scholarly articles. In 2011, the Council voted to support an open access policy for Emory. Leah Weinryb Grohsgal has been hired as the digital repository coor- dinator for the project, which is called OpenEmory, and a demo site will go online for testing in March. “We invite faculty to meet with us so that they will actually be able to test OpenEmory and give us feedback for future development,” Grohsgal said. In addi- tion to allowing faculty to submit articles for inclusion, OpenEmory will also “harvest” articles by Emory faculty already available via other open access repositories, the first of which is PubMed. Additionally, OpenEmory will provide download and view statistics for individual articles, and content will appear in Google search results. Following the testing period, the site is scheduled for a launch in fall 2012.

At its March 15 meeting, the Faculty Council unanimously voted to adopt a statement in support of a Universitywide open access policy to enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty authored scholarly articles. This vote expresses the Council’s support for the principle of open access as official University policy. It calls for the creation of a digital repository for Emory scholarship, including an “opt-in” approach to faculty participation and a commit- ment to minimizing administrative burden by “harvesting” Emory faculty work already available in existing repositories. Pending administrative approval of the principle expressed in

the statement, according to Rick Luce, director of the university libraries, library staff would require some four months to review Emory’s existing Electronic Theses and Dissertations system and assess how it might be adapted for the new repository, as well as evaluate other open-source products that might also be used. A prototype for the project would then be developed for testing.

This vote represents almost two years of Universitywide conversation requested by the Library Policy Committee and facilitated by the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence in collaboration with the Office of Intellectual Property Rights

Click here to read all Council Concerns reports on Open Access Scholarship.

At its February 15, 2011, meeting the Faculty Council heard a presentation from the Library Policy Committee (LPC) on the continuing campus dialogues on a proposal for a Universitywide open access policy. Such a policy would enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty-authored scholarly articles. After receiving faculty feedback on questions of implementing an open access repository for Emory, the LPC proposed to present a revised draft of a resolution in support of an open access policy that would minimize administrative burden. The resolution would 1) invite faculty to opt in to participating (at least at first) in the repository, rather than requiring that they opt out, and 2) emphasize that Emory faculty work that already is available through existing digital repositories would be “harvested” for inclusion in the Emory repository as it is implemented. The Council agreed to review a revised resolution draft for a possible vote during the Spring 2011 semester. This vote would express the Council’s support for the principle of open access as official University policy.

At the November 16 meeting of the Faculty Council, the Library Policy Committee returned to lead further discussion of a proposal for a University open access policy that would enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty authored scholarly articles. Members of the Council discussed the policy’s “opt-out” clause, its practicality, and whether it required a waiver by the faculty member’s dean or dean’s designate. They also talked about how the proposed new digital repository would interact with existing exter- nal digital repositories for scholarship, such as the Social Science Research Network. Key points from the proposal: authors will retain sufficient copyrights to their own work; an opt-out clause will be provided; the open access digital repository will be easy to use for authors and readers; the open access policy will be subject to periodic review and critique. A full copy of the proposed policy is available at http://guides.main.library.emory.edu/OA. Comments and questions are welcome. When faculty conversation indicates that timing is appropriate, the Faculty Council will vote on a resolution to support the policy.

At the October 19 meeting of the Faculty Council, the Library Policy Committee (LPC) presented a proposal for a University open access policy that would enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty authored scholarly articles. In April 2009, the Council approved a resolution to have the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence facilitate a series of conversations across campus exploring the possibility of an open access repository for articles by Emory faculty. The result of those discussions was the proposal endorsed by the LPC. Key points from the proposal:

• authors will retain sufficient copyrights to their own work
• an opt-out clause will be provided
• the open access digital repository must be easy to use for authors and readers
• the open access policy will be subject to periodic review and critique

For the next month, the LPC and Council encourage open conversation about the proposed policy; comments and questions are welcome at http://guides.main. library.emory.edu/OA. If faculty conversation indicates that the timing is appropriate, the Faculty Council will vote on a resolution to support the policy at its November meeting.