Lists Related to
The Open Access Movement

Formerly called Lists Related to The Free Online Scholarship Movement.

I stopped updating this page on April 30, 2008, and copied most of its lists to the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where they are now open for community editing. —Peter Suber.

This file is a storeroom with as many shelves as I care to add. It's a place where I can organize sites, ideas, and some interesting patterns in the history of the open access movement. My Timeline of the open access movement and my list of What you can do to promote open access belong here, but because of their size I've given them pages to themselves. If you can add to these lists, or correct any mistakes in them, please send me an email.

Also see my blog, newsletter, and writings on open access.

Peter Suber
Last revised April 30, 2008.

Disciplinary differences relevant to open access

  • Here I'm collecting the differences among the disciplines relevant to the realization of open access. Most economic differences among the disciplines belong on this list, but not all the relevant differences are economic. This list is intended to answer the question, "Why won't we make progress toward open access in all disciplines at the same rate?"
  • I'm retroactively looking for online sources to document some of these differences and would welcome link suggestions.
  • In no particular order.
  1. Some have superb print indices, online indices, or search engines, and some don't.
  2. Some have an established culture of preprint exchange, and some don't.
  3. The literature in some fields is pure text, perhaps with an occasional table or illustration, while in others it relies heavily on images or even multi-media presentations.
  4. In some (the sciences), journal literature is the primary literature, while in others (the humanities) journal literature only reports on the history and interpretation of the primary literature, which lies in books.
  5. In some fields, both truth and money are at stake in the results reported in scholarly literature, while in others, only truth is at stake.
  6. In some fields (some of the sciences), most published research is funded, while in others (the humanities and many sciences) very little is.
  7. In some disciplines (the sciences), the cost of research is greater than the cost of publication, while in others (the humanities), the reverse is true.
  8. In some disciplines (the sciences), the demand for articles drops off more sharply after they are published, while in others (the humanities) it declines slowly and sometimes even grows. This affects whether a journal would lose subscribers and revenue by offering open access after an embargo period of a certain length.
  9. In some fields, most journal publishers are for-profit corporations, while in other fields most are non-profit universities, libraries, or professional societies.
  10. In some fields (the humanities), nearly all publishing researchers are employed by universities, while in others (the sciences) the fraction is significantly smaller.
  11. In some fields, the sets of journal readers and journal authors are nearly identical or overlap significantly, while in others they overlap only slightly.
  12. In some fields, the need for copy editors is greater than in other fields (i.e. to compensate for language deficiencies in submissions by non-native speakers, to minimize academic obscurities for a less specialized audience, or simply to present a clearer and more professional text).
  13. In some fields, more cutting-edge research is presented first in conferences than in journals and in other fields the reverse is true.
  14. In some fields, research will be impeded if access to journal literature is not timely, while in others timeliness matters much less.
  15. In fields with higher rejection rates (social sciences and humanities), the cost of peer review per accepted paper will be higher than in fields with lower rejection rates (the natural sciences).
  16. In most fields, the author of an article is the copyright holder for everything in the article and can consent to open access for all of its contents. In other fields (e.g. art history), scholarly authors will want to include images under copyright by others, have to seek permissions, and may fail for some, fail for all, be delayed in trying, or have to pay permission fees. (Note that permission to reproduce images for open-access publication will be harder to obtain than permission for traditional publication.)
  17. In some fields, the average set of differences between submitted preprints and edited postprints is small. In others it is large. When large, the cost of publication is higher, unless all the editing is done by volunteers, and the freely archived preprint is a less adequate substitute for the postprint.
  18. In some fields (like medicine) many journals still use the Inglefinger Rule, which tends to inhibit preprint archiving. Most fields that once used the rule have stopped using it.
  19. Journals in some fields and specializations can attract advertising, in adequate or significant amounts, while journals in other fields and specializations cannot.
  20. Some fields are small enough (in practitioners and journals) that nearly every researcher has university-subsidized access to nearly every journal in the field (astrophysics is an example), while in larger fields (like biology) even researchers at wealthy universities don't have access to a significant range of the literature in their field.
  21. In some fields, mostly in the sciences, journal impact factors are well known and important in author decisions about where to submit work and university evaluations of faculty. In some fields, esp. in the humanities, they are not.

Discussion forums devoted to open-access issues

  • Here I'm limiting the list to discussion forums centered on OA issues or where OA discussions are frequent and welcome. There are many forums on related issues such as digital libraries, electronic publication, and online education.
  1. American Scientist Open Access Forum (aka AmSci Forum, September98 Forum) from American Scientist. Moderated by Stevan Harnad.
  2. BOAI Forum. The forum associated with the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Moderated by Peter Suber.
  3. Economics of Open Access. Moderated by Alastair Dryburgh.
  4. Eprints Community. The forum associated with the eprints archiving software.
  5. OAI-Eprints list from the Open Archives Initiative.
  6. Open Data from SPARC. On open access to data. Moderated by Peter Murray-Rust.
  7. Ozeprints. On OA archiving developments in Australia. Moderated by Belinda Weaver. To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@library.uq.edu.au with the message 'subscribe ozeprints' in the body of the message.
  8. PLoS Community Boards from the Public Library of Science.
  9. ScholComm from the American Library Association. On scholarly communication.
  10. SSP-L from the Society for Scholarly Publishing.
  11. SPARC-IR from SPARC. On institutional repositories.
  12. SPARC Open Access Forum (SOAF) from SPARC. Formerly called the FOS Forum. On open-access developments broadly construed, especially issues raised by the SPARC Open Access Newsletter or Open Access News blog. Moderated by Peter Suber.

Incomplete realizations of open access

  • By incomplete realizations of open access I mean steps in the right direction that do not go all the way, half-measures, compromises, or hybrid models that only partially fulfill the promise of open access. From one point of view, they count as progress and deserve support. From another point of view, they attempt to satisfy users with something less adequate and thereby delay true open access. Many journals that take these steps are experimenting and over time take further steps toward full open access.
  • I hope that friends of open access will (1) advocate full open access and do what they can to implement it, (2) encourage experimentation for those not yet willing to implement it, and (3) praise steps that make access easier and wider even if they stop short of full open access.
  1. online but not free, perhaps even expensive
  2. online, not free, but affordable
  3. free and online but only citations, abstracts, or tables of contents, not full-text
  4. free online preprints (in a preprint archive or at the author's home page) but not free online postprints
  5. free online preprints (at the journal site) from the moment of submission or acceptance, but free online postprints only some time after print publication
  6. free online special issues but not free online regular issues
  7. free online searching but not free online reading
  8. free online reading but not free copying or printing
  9. free online reading but other uses limited to "fair use" (or "fair dealing")
  10. free online reading, printing etc. but only one article at a time, hence not free or efficient crawling
  11. free and online but only for the text, not for charts, illustrations, multi-media addenda, data sets, and so on.
  12. free and online but only for the current issue, not back issues
  13. free and online but only for back issues, not the current issue
  14. free and online for all issues but only some number of months after toll-access publication
  15. free and online for all issues but only for a limited time (introductory offers)
  16. free and online but only after an article has been accepted and before it is published
  17. free and online but only for registered users, even if registration is free
  18. free and online but only for editor-selected articles from the toll-access edition or only for a supplement to the toll-access edition (this can produce true OA for the selected articles)
  19. free and online but only for author-selected and prepaid articles from the toll-access edition (this can produce true OA for the selected articles)
  20. free online access for some readers (e.g. those paying society dues, those employed by a certain institution, those living in a certain country), but not for all internet users

Institutions that support open access

  • I don't want to get into the business of listing individual institutions. But here are some clusters of institutions that support open access. This way of doing it makes the list far from complete but easier to maintain. It's a start.

Journal declarations of independence

  • By a journal declaration of independence, I mean the resignation of editors from a journal in order to launch a comparable journal with a friendlier publisher. The kinds I'm collecting for this list usually have two stages. First, an editor or group of editors resigns from the journal in order to protest its high subscription price or audience-limiting access rules. This is usually accompanied by a public statement explaining "the causes which impel them to the separation" (to quote Thomas Jefferson). Second, some of the resigning editors create a new free or affordable alternative journal to compete with the first and to embody their vision of wide access.
  • I borrow the term "declaration of independence" for this phenomenon from the SPARC project to assist journals in Declaring Independence. Of course, SPARC borrowed the term from the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
  • Chronological order.

  1. In June 1989, Editor Eddy van der Maarel and most of his editorial board resigned from Vegetatio (W. Junk, then Nijhoff, then Kluwer) in order to launch the Journal of Vegetation Science (Opulus Press and the International Association for Vegetation Science).

  2. In December 1996, Shu-Kun Lin resigned as editor of Molecules, then published by Springer-Verlag, and relaunched the journal with Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI). Springer sued to prevent Shu-Kun Lin from using the same for the MDPI journal but eventually dropped its suit.

  3. In November 1998, Michael Rosenzweig and the rest of his editorial board resigned from Evolutionary Ecology (Chapman & Hall, then International Thomson, now Kluwer), which Rosenzweig had launched in 1986, in order to create Evolutionary Ecology Research. Its birth and early survival were assisted by SPARC.

  4. In 1998 most of the editorial board of the Journal of Academic Librarianship resigned to protest the large hike in the subscription price imposed by Pergamon-Elsevier after it bought the journal from JAI Press. Several of the editors who resigned then created Portal: Libraries and the Academy at Johns Hopkins University Press.

  5. In November 1999, the entire 50 person editorial board of the Journal of Logic Programming (Elsevier) resigned and formed a new journal, Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (Cambridge). Its birth and early survival were assisted by SPARC.

  6. In January 2000 (to take effect in July 2000), Henry Hagedorn resigned as editor of the Archives of Insect Biochemistry & Physiology (Wiley-Liss) in order to form the Journal of Insect Science (originally, University of Arizona library, now University of Wisconsin Library). JIS is a free online journal with no print edition. It is now supported entirely by the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library and charges no author-side fees. Its birth and early survival were assisted by SPARC.

  7. Early in 2001, a handful of editors of Topology and Its Applications (Elsevier) resigned in order to create Algebraic and Geometric Topology (University of Warwick and International Press), a free online journal with an annual printed volume. Its birth and early survival were assisted by SPARC.

  8. Over a nine month period in 2001, forty editors of Machine Learning (Kluwer) resigned from the editorial board and published their reasons in a public letter dated October 8, 2001. One of those resigning, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, created the Journal of Machine Learning Research as a free online alternative with a quarterly print edition published by MIT Press. About two-thirds of the Machine Learning editors joined her at the new journal

  9. Elsevier has published the European Economic Review since 1969. In 1986 the European Economic Association (EEA) adopted it as its official journal. But the EEA grew increasingly unhappy with Elsevier's subscription price and its requirement that the publisher, not the association, hire the journal's editors. In 2001 the EEA started the process of declaring independence from Elsevier. In March 2003 its new official journal, the Journal of the European Economic Association, was launched by MIT Press at about one-third of the Elsevier subscription price.

  10. On July 3, 2003, The entire 40+ person editorial board Labor History (Taylor and Francis) resigned in protest over the journal's high subscription price and lack of editorial independence. The same editors then launched Labor with non-profit Duke University Press. Labor is a partner of SPARC, which assisted in the transition and launch.

  11. On August 13, 2003, the Society for the Internet in Medicine named the open-access Journal of Medical Internet Research as its new official journal, replacing the subscription-based Medical Informatics & Internet in Medicine. (This is a decision by a scholarly society, not journal editors, but I include it on the list because of the family resemblance to a true declaration of independence.)

  12. On September 22, 2003, Compositio Mathematica announced that it was leaving Kluwer to be published by the London Mathematical Society and distributed by Cambridge University Press (starting in January 2004). The journal's editor of 20+ years, Gerard van der Geer, explained in a public note that the move was triggered by a long series of unwanted Kluwer price increases. The LMS edition of the journal is not free, but priced one-third below the former price.

  13. On December 31, 2003, the entire editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned in order to protest the high price charged by the publisher (Elsevier). On January 21, 2004, the same board then launched a new journal, Transactions on Algorithms, published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
    • [old journal] Journal of Algorithms (Elsevier)
    • [new journal] Transactions on Algorithms [no web site yet] (ACM)
    • Letter from Donald E. Knuth to fellow members of the Journal Algorithms editorial board outlining the problem, describing the open-access solution, and asking them to choose among four options.
    • Public statement by the former Journal of Algorithms editors explaining their resignation. Forthcoming in the March 2004 issue of SIGACT News.
    • Hal Gabow has the dates and some other details on his home page.
    • George Porter discusses some of the aftermath in a May 14, 2004 STLQ blog posting.

  14. On January 27, 2004, Editor in Chief Dominique Boullier and the entire editorial board of Les cahiers du numérique resigned from the journal and released an open letter explaining why. They point to CduN's high price and limited online access policy which "contradict our objectives as researchers".

Open-access archives and repositories

Open-access policy statements by learned societies and professional associations

  • Here I'm collecting policy statements on how academic authors, journals, and publishers should treat the opportunities created by the internet for free online access to research literature.
  • I'll accept statements by learned societies and professional associations in any field, from any country, in any language, whether they are favorable or unfavorable to open access.
  • Alphabetical by organization.
  1. American Anthropological Association. AAA offers its members free online access to a vast array of resources in anthropology, including datasets, photos, videos, and the full-text contents of all AAA journals.
  2. American Physical Society. The copyright transfer agreement the APS uses with its journals, allowing authors to post articles to eprint servers. February 2001.
  3. American Psychological Association. June 1, 2001.
  4. Association for Computing Machinery. See especially 1.1, 3.1, 5.1. This 1998 policy has been updated and supplemented by current rules for preprints.
  5. Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. The model "license to publish" that it recommends for use by society journals.
  6. European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). The statement supports OA to texts and data and binds all ERCIM member organizations.
  7. Florida Entomological Society. The statement of its journal, Florida Entomologist.
  8. The Geological Society. The policy that applies to all of its journals.
  9. Higher Education Funding Council for England. This excerpt of the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise is the only part relevant to open access, and the only part still on the web.
  10. ICSU-UNESCO. ICSU = International Council for Science. UNESCO = United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
  11. Institute of Physics. See paragraphs 3.1 and 3.2.
  12. International Mathematical Union. Endorsement of "open access" as a goal for all mathematical literature (May 15, 2001). The IMU has also endorsed copyright advice for mathematicians; see especially point 3.c from the Executive Summary. Also see the IMU's short version of the Hodges checklist.
  13. International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. July 2001 Report of an IUPAP working group on scholarly communication. Recommendations, not yet policy. Also see the report on a subsequent November meeting which adopted steps toward the realization of the July recommendations.
  14. Medical Library Association. October 2003 statement of policy.
  15. Russian Society of BioPsychiatry. I can't find the actual text yet and have linked to a news account of the statement.

    There must be more than this! If you know of any others, please send me an email.

    For policy statements by journal publishers, see the list at the Self-Archiving FAQ and Project SHERPA.

Tools to support online archives and journals

  • I formerly had a list of software tools to support online journals here. But I've removed it (April 2, 2002) because SPARC has created a much better one (with which I helped a bit). I retain this pointer in case external links still point to my old list.

University actions for open access or against high journal prices

  • Originally this list was devoted to significant university actions to protest, resist, reverse, or extricate themselves from high journal prices, inflexible bundling arrangements, or oppressive licensing terms. I was especially interested in large-scale cancellations, new institutional policies, Faculty Senate resolutions, public statements, and recommendations to faculty, librarians, and administrators. I've since expanded its scope to include actions and statements in support of open access, even if they are not directly connected to the problem of high journal prices.
  • I quote substantial excerpts from public statements, when I can, because I know it is difficult to read them all separately and pull together their notable elements.
  • When I know of news stories about the university actions, I include them. But I haven't gone out of my way to hunt them down. The university actions are primary.
  • I only list each university once, and include subsequent actions and related news stories in the same entry. In the case of the University of California, since many of the separate campuses acted before the system acted, I list them separately. In the case of the four university members of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN), I list them under the entry for the TRLN.
  • While the list so far is limited to U.S. universities, that's only because I don't know of similar actions elsewhere. I welcome additions and corrections.
  • Chronological order, starting in the fall of 2003. There are earlier actions, but they do not seem to be part of the current wave. As I learn about earlier actions, I will consider adding them.

  1. University of California at Berkeley:  Journal Prices and Scholarly Communication, memorandum to the Academic Senate Faculty from Thomas Leonard, University Librarian, and Anthony Newcomb and Elaine Tennant, co-chairs of the Academic Senate Library Committee, September 4, 2003. The memorandum contains an introduction by Robert M. Berdahl, Chancellor.
    • Summary:  The University cancelled an undisclosed number of journals. It emphasized that the problem was runaway journal prices, not the library budget: "Berkeley will continue to face this runaway serials pricing even after the present budget crisis is over." Recommendations: "Faculty need to become aware of the pricing policies of journals (including commercial electronic journals) in their fields....Submit papers to quality journals that have reasonable pricing practices. Modify any contract you sign with a commercial publisher to ensure that you retain the rights to use your work as you see fit, including posting it to a public archive. Consider declining offers to review for unreasonably expensive journals and to serve on their editorial boards....Make changes in scholarly communication a recurring topic at departmental meetings. Consider taking over the publication and distribution of research within your scholarly community. This has already begun at Berkeley, particularly with our colleagues in the Sciences and the Social Sciences....Encourage your professional associations to maintain reasonable prices for scholarship and to establish access terms that are friendly to faculty and other users....The appearance of unconscionable pricing for academic journals...is a problem that has come upon the academy suddenly and has now reached crisis proportions. We will have no one to blame but ourselves if we do not begin to address it at once."
    • On September 15, 2003, the Berkeley Graduate Student Assembly released a public statement on the pricing crisis and journal cancellations. It cites the California Digital Library and Project Euclid as good examples of "alternate publication models", but adds that they cannot suffice. "The success of alternate models requires awareness on the part of faculty and students of the problems inherent in the current model. The Graduate Assembly calls on faculty, administrators, and graduate students to support a significant culture change in academia; we must create an environment in which faculty and students can choose to publish their cutting-edge research outside the standard academic publishing industry."
    • The Berkeley library set up a web site with background information on the problem and more detail on the Berkeley response. The site includes a useful FAQ.

    In March 2005 the Berkeley Faculty Senate adopted a Scholarly Publishing Statement of Principles.

    • Summary:  Faculty should retain "control" of their "scholarly output". This "will allow Berkeley faculty greater freedom to disseminate their work, therefore increasing others' use of it and maximizing the impact of their scholarship." Promotion and tenure decisions "will not discriminate against alternative venues for scholarly communication." The university "will provide appropriate incentives and tools for faculty to establish alternative scholarly outlets, serve on and lead relevant editorial boards, and submit their scholarly work to such ventures." "The faculty and administration of the University of California, Berkeley will support the Library’s efforts to curtail unsustainable pricing structures even if this sometimes means losing access to titles."

  2. University of California at Santa Cruz:  Resolution on ties with Elsevier Journals, adopted by the Committee on the Library and sent to the Faculty Senate, October 24, 2003.
    • The resolution is dated October 8, because that is when it was submitted to the Faculty Senate for discussion. The Faculty Senate adopted it on October 24.
    • Summary:  Elsevier journals cost 50% of the UC online serials budget but attracted only 25% of the usage. Elsevier profits rose 26% the previous year. Elsevier has been inflexible in negotiations. Taking the University of California system in its entirety, 10-15% of Elsevier content was written by UC faculty, 1,000 UC faculty serve on Elsevier editorial boards, and 150 serve as senior editors. The resolution recommends using the California Digital Library, the related eScholarship Repository, and peer-reviewed OA journals from PLoS and BMC. It urges faculty to retain copyright, the right of postprint archiving, and the right to distribute copies of their work to their classes. "Therefore, the UCSC Academic Senate resolves to call upon its tenured members to give serious and careful consideration to cutting their ties with Elsevier: no longer submitting papers to Elsevier journals, refusing to referee the submissions of others, and relinquishing editorial posts. The Senate also calls upon its Committee on Academic Personnel to recognize that some faculty may choose not to submit papers to Elsevier journals even when those journals are highly ranked. Faculty choosing to follow the advice of this resolution should not be penalized."

    On May 20, 2005, the Academic Senate of the University of California at Santa Cruz adopted a Resolution on Scholarly Publishing.

    • The resolution is dated May 9, because that is when it was submitted to the Academic Senate for discussion. The Senate adopted it on May 20.
    • Summary:  To control prices, when publishers propose "systemwide contracts for access to online content with prices which exceed the consumer price index by more than 1.5% in any one year averaged over five years," then the Libray Committee of the Academic Senate will be asked to comment on the offer. To prevent prestige-seeking from rewarding journals that charge exorbitant prices, the university will create a task force "to explore ways to meet the challenge of academic evaluation in an era when publication and performance possibilities are changing." To help faculty negotiate more beneficial contracts with publishers, the university will "take urgent steps to explore the restructuring of the University's copyright policy to assert a collective right, under the direction of individual faculty, to distribute faculty work for research and teaching....Our intention is that scholarly work would remain the property of individual faculty, but faculty members would no longer have to struggle individually with publishers to retain the right to disseminate their work." And to preserve digital scholarship, the university will "explore the establishment of an Office of Scholarly Communication or similar administrative unit to take responsibility for the persistent stewardship of all forms of scholarly communication."

  3. University of California at San Francisco:  Challenges to Sustaining Subscriptions for Scholarly Publications, memorandum to all UCSF faculty from Karen Butter, the University Librarian, and Leonard Zegans and David Rempel, co-chairs of the Committee on Library, November 1 2003.
    • Summary:  The memorandum cites many of the same numbers and complaints as the Santa Cruz resolution (above). While singling out Elsevier it also generalizes that many commercial publishers are using unsustainable business models. "The Committee suggests that all UC faculty consider alternatives to publishing in and editing Elsevier journals. New initiatives, such as Public Library of Science and BioMed Central, promise high-quality peer-reviewed content at affordable prices. The Committee also suggests that faculty consider taking action by retaining certain intellectual property rights, such as including the right to post their work with an institutional repository....Therefore, should the negotiations with Elsevier fail, the Committee on Library strongly recommends that members of the UCSF faculty give serious and careful consideration to their association with Elsevier and consider the following actions: cease submission of papers to Elsevier journals, refuse to referee the submissions of others, and relinquish editorial posts. We would encourage any UCSF faculty who elect to alter their relationship with an Elsevier journal to notify the journal of their reason for doing so. Authors may also consider crossing out the provision in a standard publication contract that gives exclusive ownership of a published article to the publisher and thereby retain the right to publish the work in an electronic medium (e.g. UC's eScholarship Repository or others.)"
    • The memorandum links to the web site on scholarly communication created by the University of California libraries (systemwide), which recommends that faculty "[s]upport open access journals and self-archiving".

  4. Harvard University:  Letter to the Harvard faculty from Sidney Verba, Director of the University Library, December 9, 2003.
    • Summary:  The letter announces Elsevier cancellations, which took effect January 1, 2004. The cancellations were "driven not only by current financial realities, but also —and perhaps more importantly— by the need to reassert control over our collections and to encourage new models for research publication at Harvard....Elsevier journals are by far the most expensive....Elsevier's 2004 contract proposal to NERL was not responsive to Harvard's objectives....Of greatest concern to the Digital Acquisitions Committee and to the University Library Council was the lack of any option by which Harvard could prune its holdings and reduce its level of spending. Libraries wishing to cancel subscriptions could do so, but only by incurring steeply increased fees that obliterate any potential savings —while Elsevier's revenues continued to rise....Toward this end, we have foregone the NERL Elsevier license in 2004 in order to regain control over Harvard library collections in a manner that responds to the University's academic programs. Instead, the libraries will purchase online access to Elsevier journals individually and selectively....Declining the bundled agreement and intentionally reducing our outlay for Elsevier titles will ultimately give us the ability to respond to the marketplace unfettered by such artificial constraints....We believe this action can be a springboard for a vigorous and sustained effort to foster new models of research publication at Harvard. This effort could take many forms, all of which will require the active involvement of Harvard's research community. On many levels, Harvard is changing the ways in which it does business."
    • Jeffrey Aguero, Libraries to Cut Academic Journals, Harvard Crimson, November 24, 2003.
    • Anon., Libraries take a stand, Harvard University Gazette, Feburary 5, 2004, p.10-11.

  5. Cornell University:  Resolution regarding the University Library's Policies on Serials Acquisitions, with Special Reference to Negotiations with Elsevier, adopted by the Faculty Senate, December 17, 2003.
    • Summary:  "At Cornell, Ithaca campus library budgets for materials increased by 149% during [the period 1986-2001], but the number of serials titles purchased increased by only 5% —at a time when the number of serials published increased by approximately 138%....Over the last decade Elsevier's price increases have often been over 10% and occasionally over 20% on a year to year basis....The [Elsevier] contract has been priced as a 'bundle,' that is, in such a way that, if the library cancels any of the Elsevier journals it currently subscribes to, the pricing of the other individual journals the library chooses to keep increases substantially. (The actual process is somewhat more complicated than this, but this is the end result.) Because the prices of the journals that are retained greatly increase when others are cancelled, the only way to achieve any real savings is to cancel a great many journals....The library, in consultation with affected faculty, has identified several hundred Elsevier journals for cancellation at the end of 2003....[T]he University Faculty Senate endorses the library's decision to withdraw from Elsevier's bundled pricing plan and undertake selective cancellation of Elsevier journals....Recognizing that the cost of Elsevier journals in particular is radically out of proportion with the importance of those journals to the library's serials collection (measured both in terms of the proportion of the total collection they represent and in terms of their use by and value to faculty and students), the University Faculty Senate encourages the library to seek in the near term, in consultation with the faculty, to reduce its expenditures on Elsevier journals to no more than 15% of its total annual serials acquisitions expenditures (from in excess of 20% in 2003)....Recognizing that the increasing control by large commercial publishers over the publication and distribution of the faculty's scholarship and research threatens to undermine core academic values promoting broad and rapid dissemination of new knowledge and unrestricted access to the results of scholarship and research, the University Faculty Senate encourages the library and the faculty vigorously to explore and support alternatives to commercial venues for scholarly communication."
    • The resolution links to a Cornell web site with background information on the problem and more details on the Cornell response.
    • Paula Hane, Cornell and Other University Libraries to Cancel Elsevier Titles, Information Today, November 17, 2003.
    • Jonathan Knight, Cornell axes Elsevier journals as prices rise, Nature, November 20, 2003 (accessible only to subscribers). Blog summary.
    • Anon., After failed negotiations, CU Library cancels Elsevier journal package, Cornell Chronicle, December 11, 2003.
    • Doris Small Helfer, Is the Big Deal Dead? Searcher, March 2004. Primarily on the Cornell action. [Not online.]

    On May 11, 2005, the Cornell University Faculty Senate adopted a Resolution Concerning Scholarly Publishing.

    • Summary: "The Senate strongly urges tenured faculty to cease supporting publishers who engage in exorbitant pricing, by not submitting papers to, or refereeing for, the journals sold by those publishers, and by resigning from their editorial boards if more reasonable pricing policies are not forthcoming....The Senate strongly encourages all faculty, and especially tenured faculty, to consider publishing in open access, rather than restricted access, journals or in reasonably priced journals that make their contents openly accessible shortly after publication. The Senate strongly urges all faculty to negotiate with the journals in which they publish either to retain copyright rights and transfer only the right of first print and electronic publication, or to retain at a minimum the right of postprint archiving. The Senate strongly urges all faculty to deposit preprint or postprint copies of articles in an open access repository such as the Cornell University DSpace Repository or discipline-specific repositories such as arXiv.org."

  6. University of California system:  Letter to all UC faculty from Lawrence Pitts, Chair of the Academic Senate, and the head librarians of the 11 UC campuses, January 7, 2004.
    • Summary:  The letter cites and summarizes the preceding actions taken by several of the UC campuses (above) and announces the cancellation of "approximately 200" journals. "The economics of scholarly journal publishing are incontrovertibly unsustainable. Taming price inflation is not enough. Unless we change the current model, academic libraries and universities will be unable to continue providing faculty, students, and staff with the access they require to the world's scholarship and knowledge. Scholars will be unable to make the results of their research widely available. These are not statements about any single company, about the strengths and weaknesses of for- and not-for-profit publishing, or about the prospects of open-access versus subscription-based journal models. They are merely observations about economic reality....[W]e are have been paying more for access to a smaller proportion of the world's published knowledge. If we are to halt or even reverse that trend, we must aggressively ramp up and institutionalize our efforts to change the scholarly communication process....The UC Libraries are working aggressively to...support alternative means for publishing scholarly materials that make high-quality peer-reviewed work available at an affordable price."
    • The university created a Special Committee on Scholarly Communication to examine new methods of scholarly communication.
    • Also see the web site on scholarly communication created by the University of California libraries (systemwide), which recommends that faculty "[s]upport open access journals and self-archiving".
    • On April 29, 2003, the UC Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee adopted a resolution on Digital Library Journal Collecting Principles. "To align costs with value, the Committee recommends that UC libraries, in close consultation with the faculty, initiate a Systemwide review and renegotiation of the University's contracts with publishers whose pricing practices are not sustainable."
    • Jennifer Murphy, Library struggles to fund access, Daily Bruin, November 17, 2003.
    • Elsevier issued its own press release on the California contract, emphasizing the volume of material the deal makes accessible to California users, January 10, 2004.
    • Anon., UC System Inks Five Year Deal with Elsevier, Stops Price Inflation, Library Journal, January 14, 2004.
    • Yvette Essen, Market Report, The Telegraph, January 20, 2004. Whether budget cuts in California will force the University of California to renegotiate its contract with Elsevier. Blog summary.
    • List of Elsevier titles for which the University of California libraries currently have subscriptions.
    • Open letter from the UC Academic Council and university librarians to UC faculty about rising journal prices, January 14, 2005.

    On March 10, 2005, the University of California Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee adopted a Resolution on The University’s Role in Fostering Positive Change in Scholarly Communication.

    • Summary. High journal prices have created "a state of crisis that threatens to compromise the University of California's core mission." The committee calls on the university administration to "support publications and publishing innovations that disseminate scholarship to the broadest set of readers at the most affordable cost" and "establish and sustain repositories and alternative publishing mechanisms that enable the broadest dissemination of UC's scholarship". It also calls on the university faculty to "seize every opportunity to regain control of and maximize the impact of their scholarly communication; manage their intellectual property in ways that allow retention of critical rights, in order to ensure the widest dissemination of UC's scholarship and its unfettered use within the University to support teaching and research;...eliminate affiliations with publishers whose publishing and pricing practices reveal a focus on profits at the expense of open scholarly publication; [and] support library actions that attempt to break the cycle of hyper-inflation in the cost of scholarly material even when such action reduces access to material."

  7. Triangle Research Libraries Network:  Changes in Elsevier Science Access, memorandum to the Faculties (of Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) from Peter Lange, Provost at Duke, James Oblinger, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor at NCSU, and Robert Shelton, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor at UNC at Chapel Hill, January 14, 2004.
    • The memorandum speaks for the entire TRLN consortium, which has four university members. However, the memorandum is only addressed to the faculties of three members. I don't know why the fourth, North Carolina Central University, was omitted.
    • Summary:  "[T]he member universities of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) have decided to discontinue the consortial arrangement by which they provided access to electronic journals published under the Elsevier Science imprint....Throughout months of renewal negotiations with Elsevier, TRLN and its member libraries have articulated two principal objectives: [1] To regain and maintain control over library collecting decisions in order to meet the constantly evolving information needs of faculty, researchers, and students; and [2] To manage overall costs in order to keep Elsevier expenditures consistent with materials budgets that have not been increasing at anywhere near Elsevier's annual inflation rate. Elsevier's final offer fails to meet both of these objectives....Because Elsevier Science has not offered TRLN a pricing model responsive to the needs of the consortium, TRLN has elected to terminate its consortial arrangement with Reed Elsevier. Each TRLN library will now make individual arrangements for Elsevier journal access on its own campus....Although libraries and universities are supporting new publishing models in an effort to maintain access to high-quality, peer-reviewed research at a manageable cost, there is still a reliance on the products of for-profit publishers. As a result of this dynamic, libraries can no longer offer the same range of publications to the academic community....The libraries...will begin to explore with you new models of scholarly communication that may, in the long term, help reduce costs and make scholarly information more widely available."
    • TRLN member North Carolina State University adopted a separate Resolution on Bundled Content and Elsevier on December 2, 2003. "Whereas, open access and communication of scholarly research are fundamental to intellectual and academic freedom and critical to economic growth and development...Resolved, that the North Carolina State University Faculty Senate affirm the responsibility of the university, through its Libraries, to maintain strong and flexible control over the state funds entrusted to it and for the Libraries to continue to make sound fiscal decisions that will provide balanced collections that meet the current and future needs of NC State Faculty and Students including the ability to decline highly restrictive offers, such as those recently proposed by Reed Elsevier for its ScienceDirect online product."
    • Eric Ferreri, Colleges ax journals deal, the Durham NC Herald-Sun, January 12, 2004. Blog summary.
    • Anon., TRLN to Forgo the Big Deal, Library Journal, January 14, 2004.
    • Kenneth Ball, Libraries cancel Elsevier contract, North Carolina State University's TechnicianOnline, January 16, 2004.
    • Kenneth Ball, Senate Backs Libraries, North Carolina State University's Technician Online, December 4, 2003. Blog summary.
    • Anon., NCSU Faculty Takes Hard Line on New Elsevier Deal, Library Journal, December 8, 2004.
    • Joseph Schwartz, Campus to drop journal contract, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Daily Tar Heel, January 16, 2004.
    • Tracy Ke, As journal prices rise, libraries struggle, Duke Chronicle, February 4, 2005.
    • Judy I. Woodburn, Dealing With Journal Cuts: When the Sky's Not the Limit, Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, vol. 2, no. 4 (2005) pp. 1-18. About the Duke University Medical Center Library.

  8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT):  Announcement on the MIT Libraries web site.
    • I blogged this news on February 6, 2004, when it seemed to be fairly new. But the web site says it was last updated on December 16, 2003. I haven't yet been able to find other web pages showing which date is more accurate. My guess is that it's February news and the revision date on the page is in error.
    • Summary:  "The MIT Libraries have recently taken steps to reduce the impact of two large commercial publishers on our ability to make responsible decisions in selecting information resources for use at MIT. Specifically, we declined three-year renewal contracts that would have required us to guarantee on-going spending levels with Wiley InterScience and Elsevier Science. These actions ensure that if the Libraries need to reduce spending in the next year or two, we can make those decisions based solely on the specific needs of the MIT user community, without giving unfair advantage to certain publishers....The decision to decline the three-year renewals was difficult because the terms for one-year renewals were considerably less attractive. However, the one-year renewals put us in a position of being able to cancel titles next year if we need to."
    • The announcement links to an MIT web page with more background information.

  9. University of Connecticut, Resolution, adopted by the Faculty Senate, February 9, 2004.
    • Summary:  "Access to the scholarly literature is vital to all members of the academic community. Scholars and their professional associations share a common interest in the broadest possible dissemination of peer-reviewed contributions. Unfortunately, the business practices of some journals and journal publishers is inimical to these interests and threatens to limit the promise of increased access inherent in digital technologies. Development of library collections is more and more constrained by the rising costs of journals and databases. Faculty, staff, students, and university adminstrators must all take greater responsibility for the scholarly communication system. Therefore, the University Senate calls on all faculty, staff, and students of the University of Connecticut to become familiar with the business practices of journals and journal publishers in their specialty. It especially encourages senior tenured faculty to reduce their support of journals or publishers whose practices are inconsistent with the health of scholarly communication by submitting fewer papers to such journals, by refereeing fewer papers submitted to such journals, or by resigning from editorial posts associated with such journals. It encourages them to increase their support of existing journals and publishers whose practices are consistent with the health of scholarly communication. The Senate also calls on University administrators and departmental, school, college and University committees to reward efforts by faculty, staff, and students to start or support more sustainable models for scholarly communication. It calls on them to provide financial and material support to faculty, staff, and students whose work helps to ensure broad access to the scholarly literature. It also calls on professional associations and the University to invest in the infrastructure necessary to support new venues for peer-reviewed publication."
    • Before it adopted this resolution, the Faculty Senate deleted a recommendation (contained e.g. in the Santa Cruz resolution) that tenure and promotion committees should respect faculty decisions to follow the advice of the resolution. See the minutes of the faculty meeting (scroll to item 8).
    • Also see the University of Connecticut Libraries' web site on the scholarly communication crisis.

  10. Stanford University:  Faculty senate approves measure targeting for-profit journal publishers, a press release issued February 24, 2004. The press release is based on a February 19 vote of the Faculty Senate.
    • A slightly revised version of the press release was issued on February 25, 2004.
    • Summary:  With one dissenting vote, the Faculty Senate voted to encourage "libraries to cancel some costly journal subscriptions and faculty to withhold articles and reviews from publishers who engage in questionable pricing practices. The motion singled out publishing giant Elsevier as deserving special attention. 'We're not doing this to position ourselves to negotiate more effectively with Elsevier,' said University Librarian Michael Keller. 'We're doing this to change the whole scene. We're trying to change the fundamental nature of scholarly communication in the journal industry.'...'I think it's going to take a long time for its prestige and cachet to wear out,' [biology professor Robert] Simoni said. 'There are still so many people who think publishing in Cell is going to make their career that they'll still get submissions. But if institutions like Stanford and others stop subscribing to journals like Cell, authors will eventually realize that their work is not being seen. This is an evolutionary change and it will take time."
    • My summary is based on the press release. But also see how the action was recorded in the Faculty Senate minutes.
    • Michael Miller, Fac Sen discusses journal fees, The Stanford Daily, February 6, 2004. Stanford discusses how to respond to the serials crisis.
    • Ryan Sands, Fac Sen addresses costly journals, The Stanford Daily, February 20, 2004.
    • Linda Cicero, At What Cost? Stanford Magazine, June 2004.

  11. University of Maryland:  Changes in Access to Journals Published by Reed Elsevier, a letter from William W. Destler, Provost, to the faculty, February 20, 2004.
    • Summary:  The university cancelled consortial access to the Baltimore campus subscriptions and converted the College Park campus subscriptions to electronic-only. It describes the failed Elsevier negotiations in language similar to that in the TRLN statement above, and then continues. "By retaining the ability to cancel titles, the Libraries maintain the option of building collections with other publishers' titles where they provide greater value to the campus community....The University of Maryland is working with other research universities to address this crisis. One example of this type of work is the Libraries' participation in the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [SPARC]....I firmly believe that universities must address this crisis in the system of scholarly communication. Our libraries need our support in their work with the university community to regain control of their budgets, their collections, and the intellectual property that is the ultimate output of the research enterprise. I encourage you to continue to engage in discussions with our library faculty about what we are doing to explore new models of scholarly communication and restore a measure of rationality to the publishing system. It is important to extend the discussion beyond our campus as well, especially for those of you who serve on editorial boards of journals published commercially or by learned societies."

  12. Indiana University at Bloomington:  Resolution on Journals, Databases, and Threats to Scholarly Publication, adopted by the Bloomington Faculty Council, February 27, 2004.
    • Summary:  "The continuing escalation of serial prices, which have more than doubled in the past 10 years, is unsustainable in the long run. The increase is due to a number of factors: the information explosion, the expansion of electronic capabilities by publishing groups, as well as the growth of mega-publishers whose profits greatly exceed the Consumer Price Index....Scholars and their professional associations share a common interest in the broadest possible dissemination of peer-reviewed contributions. Unfortunately, it is the business practices of a few large journals and journal publishers that threaten to limit the promise of increased access inherent in digital technologies. Therefore, the Bloomington Faculty Council [A] calls on all faculty, staff, students, and university administrators of Indiana University Bloomington to work toward a more open publishing system by increasing their support of existing refereed journals and publishers whose practices are consistent with open access to scholarly communication and to support those who make such choices when considering tenure and promotion; [B] encourages faculty and staff to separate themselves from publishers with a narrow focus on profits at the expense of open scholarly publication; [C] calls on the university Libraries to educate faculty, staff, students, and university administrators on the business practices of different journals and journal publishers and their impact on the health of scholarly communication and on our Libraries at Indiana University Bloomington." The preamble adds the specific recommendations that faculty consider "withholding publications from their journals or choosing not to sit on their editorial boards" and that "[i]n tenure and promotion decisions faculty and staff must be confident that there is departmental and university support for their decisions to publish in referred journals with more open access."
    • Chris Freiberg, Council approves code revisions, Indiana Digital Student News, March 3, 2004.

  13. Macalester College:  Background Information on Science Direct Decision, February 29, 2004.
    • Summary:  Macalaster decided not to sign a three-year renewal of ScienceDirect. "The reality is we just can't commit to the inflexibility of not cancelling any Elsevier titles....[W]e invited faculty members in the sciences divisions to a meeting on Monday, Nov. 10th. At that meeting, we shared the details of the contract and we presented three options including to stay as a participant within the deal, and we explained that by not participating we would not have electronic access to the Elsevier titles we purchased in print. It was a small group, but they were all in agreement, giving up electronic access and access to a significant number of journals that many of them used was a sacrifice that needed to be made and one that they supported."
    • Macalester signed the joint press release issued by four private Minnesota liberal arts colleges in May 2004, spurning ScienceDirect in favor of open access. See the next entry below.

  14. Carleton College, Gustavus Adolphus College, Macalester College, and St. Olaf College:  Press Release on Science Direct Decision, May 2004.
    • Summary:  The four decisions were independent, but the colleges issued a joint press release. "While the reasons and decision processes were somewhat different on each campus, we are all convinced that the escalating prices for many scientific journals are unsustainable and that the time has come for change....Our faculties are aware that this decision will result in a painful reduction in a overall journal access in the short term. But they are supporting us because they understand that it is in the long term interests of our institutions to reassert control over our collections and to encourage new, more sustainable publishing models....Open access journals are a clear alternative to the unsustainable bundling of journals, which prohibits cancellations and which consistently increase at rates of 5-8% per year. We are working with other colleges and universities to address this crisis by supporting the work of SPARC, Public Library of Science, and other groups that seek to increase broad and cost-effective access to peer reviewed scholarship. In declining the Science Direct offer we are joining an increasing number of institutions signaling that we are serious in our demands for reasonable pricing for scholarly communication." The press release recommends that faculty at the four colleges avoid writing or reviewing "for journals that are not moving towards an open access model" and that they retain the rights to authorize open access. It recommends that the four colleges establish institutional repositories and adopt "policies that signal that publication in quality open access journals is acceptable in the institutions' system of rewards and recognition."
    • Anon., Four Small Minnesota Colleges Say No to the "Big Deal", Library Journal, May 25, 2004.

  15. Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI):  Resolution on Journals, Databases, and Threats to Scholarly Publication adopted by the university, February 25, 2005.
    • Summary:  "[1] The IUPUI libraries and administration will re-commit themselves to educating the university community on the significance of open access to knowledge to the mission of the university....[5] An individual may, after consulting with relevant individuals in the department and school, choose not to submit his or her work to a journal whose business practices are considered detrimental to the overall well-being of their field of study. This philosophy must be adopted on a long-term basis and, if so, the individual will not be penalized with regard to tenure, promotion, or salary increases, as long as the quality of the work can be established through peer review. [6] For decisions regarding tenure, promotion, or salary increases, and following IUPUI tenure and promotion guidelines, appropriate weight will be given to the active promotion of open access by a faculty or staff member through the creation of an on-line journal or any other portal designed to collect knowledge from others and then disseminate that knowledge to a wider audience in their field. [7] The university libraries will promote the development of open access by IUPUI employees by actively assisting any individual who wishes to develop a conduit as described in point 6."

  16. University of North Carolina:  Two resolutions in support of open access adopted by the Faculty Council, March 4, 2005.
    • Summary:  The first resolution simply resolves that "to the extent permitted by law, UNC-CH faculty are the owners of their research and should retain ownership, or use other means to foster open access publication wherever possible." The second creates two task forces, one to follow-up a campus-wide convocation on OA and one to establish an institutional repository. The second resolution also asks departments "to review tenure and promotion standards to recognize publishing in non-traditional sources" and to educate their faculty about "the problems of scholarly communications".
    • Greg Steen, Faculty touts online journals, The Daily Tar Heel, April 11, 2005.

  17. In March 2005 (exact date unknown), the University of California at Berkeley Faculty Senate adopted another resolution. Chronologically it belongs here in the list, but I've listed it above with the other Berkeley actions.

  18. On March 7, 2005, the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison adopted a Resolution in Support of Accessible Scholarly and Scientific Publications.
    • Summary:  STM faculty "must take action to ensure that their works are accessible to advance research and learning" and "should consider publishing their research articles in:...Peer-reviewed "open access" journals and databases; and/or "Self-archiving" their works in information repositories supported by research institutions and professional societies." The Faculty Senate supports librarians in their efforts to control journal costs and "urges both the library and faculty to support alternatives to commercial ownership and management of scholarly and scientific publication."

  19. On March 10, 2005, the University of California adopted another resolution. Chronologically it belongs here in the list, but I've listed it above with the other California actions.

  20. University of Kansas:  Resolution endorsing open access unanimouslyl adopted by the Faculty Senate, March 10, 2005.
    • Summary:  Some publisher business practices are "inimical to scholars' interests". The Faculty Senate "Calls on all faculty of the University of Kansas to seek amendments to publisher's copyright transfer forms to permit the deposition of a digital copy of every article accepted by a peer-reviewed journal into the ScholarWorks repository, or a similar open access venue;...Encourages tenured faculty in particular to support journals (and their publishers) whose pricing and accessibility policies are consistent with continuing access to this literature through the choices faculty make in the submission of papers, the allotment of time to refereeing activities, and participation in editorial posts; Calls on University administrators and departmental, school, college and University committees to reward efforts by faculty, staff, and students to start or support more sustainable models for scholarly communication, and to provide financial and material support for organized activities initiated by faculty, staff, and students that will ensure broad access to the scholarly literature;...[8] Also calls on the University, professional scholarly associations, and professional organizations of university administrators to establish clear guidelines for merit salary review, peer evaluation on federal grants, and promotion and tenure evaluation of faculty and staff that will allow the assessment of and the attribution of appropriate credit for works published in such venues....'
    • In a March 25, 2005 memorandum explaining the resolution, Provost David Shulenburger urged Kansas faculty to deposit their research output in the KU institutional repository, ScholarWorks. Excerpt: 'KU ScholarWorks, a digital repository, is now available as a convenient site in which to place your published work, working papers, datasets, and other original material. Items placed in KU ScholarWorks will be archived permanently and will be available to search engines like Google and Google Scholar. Many studies demonstrate that articles that are available electronically are cited in other publications at four or more times the frequency of works that are not available electronically. It is in your interest and the University's to populate KU ScholarWorks with a complete set of KU faculty's scholarly output.' Shulenburger also suggests language to use in a copyright transfer agreement to reserve the right to deposit work in ScholarWorks.'
    • Shortly after the resolution was adopted, KU became the first U.S. university to sign the Registry of Institutional OA Self-Archiving Policies.
    • Roger Martin, Research Findings Should be Made Accessible to Public, Kansas City Info Zine, March 6, 2005.

  21. Columbia University:  Resolution endorsing open access unanimously adopted by the University Senate, April 1, 2005.
    • Summary:  The resolution endorsed "the principle of open access to the fruits of scholarly research" and urged "the University to advance new models for scholarly publishing that will promote open access" and urged Columbia faculty "to play a part in these open-access endeavors in their various capacities as authors, readers, editors, referees, and members of scientific boards and learned associations etc., (a) by encouraging and collaborating with publishers' efforts to advance open access, (b) by retaining intellectual property rights in their own work where this will help it become more widely available, and (c) by remaining alert to efforts by publishers to impose barriers on access to the fruits of scholarly research."
    • See Megan Greenwell, CU Senate Postpones Resolution Yet Again, Columbia Spectator, March 1, 2004.
    • Lisa Hirschmann, U. Senate Passes Grievance Procedure, Columbia Spectator, April 4, 2005.
    • Also see the web site on the problem and solutions created by the Columbia Health Sciences Library.

  22. Case Western Reserve University:  Resolution on Open Access adopted by the Faculty Senate on April 25, 2005.
    • Summary:  "'[T]he Faculty Senate urges the University and its members to [1] Support Open Access publishing in their educational, research, editorial, and administrative roles by encouraging their professional societies to move toward Open Access publishing, aiding in forming and providing editorial assistance to peer-reviewed Open Access journals, and favoring such journals when submitting their own research; [2] Encourage the University's libraries to reallocate resources away from high-priced publishers; [3] Support the consideration of peer-reviewed Open Access material during the promotion and tenure process; [4] Post their work prior to publication in an open digital archive and seek to retain particular copyright rights enabling them to post their published work in a timely fashion and provide institutional support to those seeking to do so; and [5] Establish infrastructure to sustain digital Open Access publication."

  23. On May 11, 2005, the Cornell University Faculty Senate adopted another resolution in support of OA. Chronologically it belongs here in the list, but I've listed it above with the earlier Cornell action.

  24. On May 20, 2005, the University of California at Santa Cruz Academic Faculty Senate adopted a Resolution on Scholarly Communication. Chronologically it belongs here in the list, but I've listed it above with the earlier Santa Cruz action.

  25. On June 6, 2005, the University of Bielefeld adopted a resolution on open access. The resolution requests [fordert auf] that Bielefeld faculty deposit copies of their postprints in the Bielefeld institutional repository and encourages and supports [ermutigt und unterstützt] them to submit their work to OA journals.

  26. On June 8, 2005, the Oregon State University Faculty Senate adopted a resolution on scholarly communications.
    • Summary:  The Faculty Senate "supports the principle of open access to scholarly research." It "urges the university to advance new models for scholarly publishing and electronic dissemination of scholarly works that will promote open access, helping to reshape the marketplace in which scholarly ideas circulate, in a way that is consistent with standards of peer review and scholarly excellence." It also "urges the university to monitor and resist efforts to impose digital rights management regimes and technologies that obstruct or limit open access, except as necessary to secure rights of privacy." It urges faculty "to play a part in these open-access and affordable-access endeavors in their various capacities as authors, readers, editors, referees and members of scientific boards and learned associations, (a) by encouraging and collaborating with publishers' efforts to advance open access, (b) by retaining intellectual property rights in their own work where this will help it become more widely available, and (c) by remaining alert to efforts by publishers to impose barriers on access to the fruits of scholarly research."

What you can do to help the cause of open access

My list of what you can do to promote open access used to be located here. But over the years it grew too large to be a sub-list in a larger list of lists. On March 7, 2005, I gave it a page of its own. Please update the links and bookmarks that brought you here.

Lists maintained by others

Return to the Newsletter

Return to the Blog.

Peter Suber
Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge
Senior Researcher, SPARC
peters@earlham.edu

Copyright © 2001-2008, Peter Suber. This is an open-access document.

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