The Internet has brought unparalleled opportunities for expanding the availability of research by bringing down economic and physical barriers to sharing. The networked digital environment can democratize access, accelerate discovery, encourage new interdisciplinary approaches to complex research challenges, and enable new research strategies.
To take advantage of these opportunities and to further their mission of creating, preserving, and disseminating knowledge, many academic institutions are taking steps to capture the benefits of Open Access by endorsing policies to encourage Open Access to scholarly articles. If you’re considering a campus open-access policy, please explore the resources available here and let us know how we might assist.
How We Can Help
SPARC offers two types of resources to facilitate campus policy discussions based on the facts about Open Access, including two documents drawn from the experiences of those who have successfully spearheaded efforts to gain adoption of an institutional open-access policy. “Campus open-access policy ‘Choice Points’,” which touches on all available options in developing a policy, along with recommended steps; and “Responses to common misconceptions about campus open-access policies,” which can help you answer questions as they arise. You might also find Peter Suber’s “Good Practices for Campus Open Access Policies” wiki a useful resource as well.
SPARC also has additional extensive background materials available to help fill any gaps. These include the facts about copyright law and about the compatibility between Open Access and journal sustainability, A white paper on implementing a campus open-access policy; videos from the SPARC-ACRL forum on the groundbreaking Harvard open-access policy; and background on the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy, and more.
Additional Support
SPARC also is pleased to coordinate the work of a group of expert advisers who have experience with the process of gaining faculty acceptance for a campus open-access policy and who stand by to answer questions that remain after you have examined these tools. The group includes:
Hal Abelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michael W. Carroll, American University
Ray English, Oberlin College
Diane Graves, Trinity University
Lorraine Haricombe, University of Kansas
Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton
Stuart Shieber, Harvard University
Peter Suber, Earlham College and Harvard University
John Willinsky, Stanford University
Heather Joseph, Executive Director, SPARC
Please contact SPARC, via Heather Joseph at heather [at] sparcopen [dot] org, to be put in touch with the advisory group.
