The University of Kansas Libraries

Open Access Policy Announcement

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to inform you that the Faculty Senate approved an Open Access Policy for KU at its final meeting on April 30, 2009. On May 19th and 22nd, respectively, the Provost and Chancellor approved the policy.  The entire policy is included at the end of this message. I want to emphasize that the policy has been approved in concept, but the details have yet to be determined.  Details of the policy implementation will be developed in the 2009-2010 academic year by a faculty senate task force.

The Open Access Policy notes that faculty members grant permission to the university to make a copy of their scholarly journal articles available in the open access repository, KU ScholarWorks.  The introduction to the policy states:

The faculty of the University of Kansas (KU) is committed to sharing the intellectual fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible and lowering barriers to its access. In recognition of that commitment and responsibility, the KU faculty is determined to take advantage of new technologies to increase access to its work by the citizens of Kansas and scholars, educators, and policymakers worldwide.

Open Access policies such as KU’s provide an excellent opportunity for the faculty and University to offer the broadest access to its journal-published scholarship, bringing greater visibility to the authors’ work. Collective participation in the Open Access Policy provides transparent methods to showcase and share the breadth and depth of the faculty’s collective contribution to the academic record. It also provides a method to demonstrate KU’s dedication to the University’s public mission of serving the state of Kansas.  The approval of this policy is also significant in that it makes KU the first public university to pass such a faculty-initiated policy.  It puts KU faculty in the company of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s Law School, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Stanford’s School of Education, and most recently, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (see links below). These are all institutions whose faculties voted and approved policies very similar to the policy passed by our Faculty Senate. 

As noted above, the KU Faculty Senate decided that additional details of the policy would be developed by faculty governance in consultation with the Provost’s Office, to be voted on by the Faculty Senate in the coming academic year.  Whatever implementation plan is created will provide faculty with an option to seek a waiver from the policy (to opt out). As such an implementation task force is being created to develop the policy details and provide a report during the 2009-2010 school year.  FacEx has named Ada Emmett (aemmett@ku.edu), Associate Librarian for Scholarly Communications, to lead the task force, which will be comprised of faculty, administrators, and IT personnel.  I expect the task force to hold open meetings and pursue other mechanisms to receive input and suggestions from the faculty as it works to fulfill its charges in the coming months.

I want to thank the ad hoc committee that developed the policy, led by Distinguished Professor Town Peterson.  The committee included faculty members Jennifer Church-Duran and Ada Emmett.  The final version of the Open Access Policy, which passed in the Faculty Senate, is the result of many hours of deliberation and discussion by the Faculty Research Committee, FacEx, Faculty Senate, and significant discussion with the faculty at large.  Faculty governance leaders and committee members also met with the Provost, Vice Provost for Research, Deans of schools and the College and other administrators about specific aspects of the policy proposal.  Thank you to all who participated in this process. 

My goal as Faculty Senate President is to keep you informed about decisions made by Faculty Senate and about issues that we are exploring.  I am open to hearing your thoughts about this policy or others we are working on and representing your needs and concerns through Faculty governance.  If I can be of any service to you this academic year, don’t hesitate to contact me (lwolf@ku.edu).  

Sincerely,

Lisa

Lisa Wolf-Wendel

Faculty Senate President

For information about Open Access at universities and funding agencies see:

Harvard: http://chronicle.com/news/article/3943/harvard-faculty-adopts-open-access-requirement
MIT: http://info-libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/faculty-and-researchers/mit-faculty-open-access-policy/
Open Access specialist Dr. Peter Suber: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm

AN OPEN ACCESS POLICY FOR UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SCHOLARSHIP

The faculty of the University of Kansas (KU) is committed to sharing the intellectual fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible and lowering barriers to its access. In recognition of that commitment and responsibility, the KU faculty is determined to take advantage of new technologies to increase access to its work by the citizens of Kansas and scholars, educators, and policymakers worldwide. In support of greater openness in scholarly endeavors, the KU faculty agrees to the following concept:

Each faculty member grants to KU permission to make scholarly articles to which he or she made substantial intellectual contributions publicly available in the KU open access institutional repository, and to exercise the copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. This license in no way interferes with the rights of the KU faculty author as the copyright holder of the work. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while a faculty member of KU. Faculty will be afforded an opt out opportunity. Faculty governance in consultation with the Provost's office will develop the details of the policy which will be submitted for approval by the Faculty Senate.