The University of California is considering a Draft Open Access Policy dated January 29, 2007 (but based on a proposal from May 30, 2006). Here's the heart of it:
This open access policy seeks to increase authors’ influence in scholarly publishing by establishing a collective practice of retaining a right to open access dissemination of certain scholarly works. University of California faculty shall routinely grant to The Regents of the University of California a license to place in a non-commercial open-access online repository the faculty member’s scholarly work published in a scholarly journal or conference proceedings. In the event a faculty member is required to assign all or a part of his or her copyright rights in such scholarly work to a publisher as part of a publication agreement, the faculty member shall retain in the publication agreement the right to grant the foregoing license to the Regents. Faculty may opt out of this policy for any specific work or invoke a specified delay before such work appears in an open-access repository in accordance with the opt-out mechanism set forth below....
The University of California eScholarship Repository is an open access repository in which UC faculty-authored materials can be placed to meet the goals of the policy. Placement of UC faculty-authored material in other trusted, publicly-accessible repositories, such as the National Library of Medicine’s PubMedCentral, or the physics arXiv will also meet the goals of the policy. Trusted, publicly accessible repositories are those which provide reliable, long-term access to managed digital resources; are internet-accessible at no fee for the reader; have explicit preservation and governance policies; and use data formats and technology management that conform to industry standards.
The draft policy also includes a draft author's addendum, to help authors retain the rights they need to authorize OA.
The policy was drafted by a working group convened by Wyatt R. Hume, the UC's Provost and Executive Vice President, who has asked (February 7, 2007) the UC campuses to review it by May 20, 2007.
Comment. This is a strong policy for the largest university system in the US, and well along the process toward adoption. It could trigger a wave of similar policies across the country. It doesn't directly require faculty to deposit their work in an OA repository, but it does require them to give the university permission to disseminate an OA copy. (Like other university mandates, this one has exceptions and faculty may opt out for specific works.) One gets the impression that the university will actually provide OA whenever it has permission, but that is unstated. If we assume it, then this "permission mandate" becomes an OA mandate. Definitely one to watch.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/16/2007 11:52:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
