Open Access to Scholarship:Department Chairs Meeting, 29 May 2009

Brian E. C. Schottlaender & Stefan Tanaka

ISSUES IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION

• Knowledge output is increasing

• Market is unsustainable economicallyo library budgets tapped out

o sales are flattening

• Access is decreasing

OPEN-ACCESS LITERATURE . . .

“. . . is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the Internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.”— Peter Suber

WHY OPEN ACCESS IS IMPORTANT

• Access to research

• Cost

• Increased visibility

TWO PRIMARY VEHICLES . . .

. . . for accomplishing Open Access to scholarship:• Open Access Journals e.g.,

PLoS Biologyhttp://www.plosbiology.org/home.action

• Open Access Repositories e.g., CDL’s eScholarship Repositoryhttp://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/

OA EVENTS IN 2008 AND 2009

• The Wellcome Trust’s “Position Statement in Support of Open and Unrestricted Access to Published Research”

• “The Harvard Initiatives for Open Access to the Scholarly Literature”

• “The NIH Public Access Policy”• HR 801, “Fair Copyright in

Research Works Act” (a.k.a. Conyers bill)

THE NIH PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY

“The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all

investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the

National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their

final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made

publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of

publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.”

COMPLYING WITH THE NIH MANDATE

UC ACADEMIC COUNCIL ACTIVITIES

• Encouraging the UC Libraries to bargain hard with journal aggregators

• Informing UC faculty of Open Access issues

• Promoting Open Access initiatives at UC

• Promoting national legislation and policies in the Open Access arena UCOLASC Open Access Proposal

OPEN ACCESS RESOURCES

• The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

http://www.arl.org/sparc/• Open Knowledge Society

http://oksociety.in/node/1 • Open Access News

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

• Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries Open Access Toolkithttp://www.usc.edu/hsc/nml/aahsl/open_access_toolkit.html

ONE-STOP SHOPPING

QUESTIONS?