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Open Access Task Force

Over 70 universities in the U.S. have adopted Open Access policies, and a number of funding organizations around the world have mandated Open Access for research they are supporting. Understanding this trend, and in pursuit of continued initiatives that further enhance the social embeddness of ASU, the University Senate has constituted an Open Access Task Force. 

Charge

Charge

To develop an ASU Open Access policy for Senate review and vote.

It is recommended that the committee conduct a survey of existing Open Access programs and use ASU faculty expertise to design an Open Access policy for Arizona State University.  The task force designed policy should be benchmarked against those previously surveyed policies, with the project completed, and receive a Senate review and vote during the 2016-17 academic year. To accomplish this outcome, the task force may develop and schedule information meetings for senators and ASU faculty to receive feedback and build consensus. The task force will also have access to resources from the Office of Knowledge and Enterprise Development, the Library, the Office of the Provost, and the Senate office 

Roster

Task Force Roster

Helene Ossipov, Chair, Associate Professor SILC, past president of the University Senate helene.ossipov@asu.edu 

  • Thomas Seager from the University Senate Personnel committee
  • Jane Maienschein member from the University Senate Library Liaison committee
  • Thurmon Lockhart, Senate University Services and Facilities committee
  • Greg Stone, Research and Creative Activities committee
  • Deborah Abston, Senator representing the ASU libraries
  • LaDawn Haglund, Faculty member from the Tempe campus
  • Steven Reynolds, Faculty member from the Tempe campus
  • Barry Maid from the Polytechnic campus
  • Audrey Beardsley, Faculty member from the West campus
  • Matthew Buman from the Downtown Phoenix campus
  • Member from the Graduate Student Professionals Association

ex officio membership

  • Kathleen Puckett, University Senate President
  • Chuck Barbee, Director University Senate office
  • Stefanie Lindquist ASU Deputy Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
  • Representative from OKED
  • Anali Perry, ASU University Libraries

 

ASU Policies

Relevant ASU Policies

RSP 406:  Click here

RSP 604:  Click here

Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) Intellectual Property Policy 6-908: Click here

ASU Digitial Repository Licensing Policy: Click here

STARS, a rating system for campus Sustainability: Click here  

Resources

ASU Resources

Office of the University Provost

  • To be determined     

University Senate office

  • Chuck Barbee – Director
  • Pamela Hoyle – Administrative Specialist

From the Library

  • Jim O'Donnell jod@asu.edu –University Librarian and Professor, University Libraries
  • Susan Barrett susan.barrett@asu.edu – Director of Library Repository Services and Technology, Cyberinfrastructure Services
  • Anali Perry anali.perry@asu.edu – Associate Librarian, Collections Scholarly Communication

From OKED

Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) accreditation representative

AzTE (Intellectual Property Management)

  • Ken Polasko, kpolasko@azte.com Executive Director and Senior Vice President of Business Development

Sample Open Access Policies

Harvard: Click here

University of Arizona: Click here

University of California: Click here

Princeton: Click here

MIT:  Click here

Policy Building Support

Harvard Open Access Framework: Click here

Open Access Articles

Christine Fruin and Shan Sutton. (2016) Strategies for Success: Open Access Policies in North American Institutions. College & Research Libraries. 77:4. p.469.  http://crl.acrl.org/content/77/4/469.full.pdf+html

Eric Priest. (2012) Copyright and the Harvard Open Access Mandate. Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property. 10:7. p.377. http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njtip/vol10/iss7/1

FAQs

Frequently asked questions

An open access policy is first a statement of principle by the faculty, that we value the broadest possible dissemination of our work as a way to advance the impact and reach of our scholarship. Secondly, an open access policy is a statement of expectation in support of this principle - that while we may publish wherever we want, a manuscript of our work will be openly available through the ASU Digital Repository.

What is Open Access?

Open access refers to the free availability of journal articles on the public internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to analytical software, or use them for any other lawful, non-commercial purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

Why are we doing this?

The University Senate Leadership believes that any policy concerning Open Access should come from the faculty.  A policy, approved by the faculty, would allow for consistency in requirements for inclusion in the repository, provide guidelines for any unit policies on Open Access, and give one voice to the university.

The policy seeks to increase the reach and impact of ASU research by making it more widely available. This goal supports ASU’s charter for inclusivity and social embeddedness and has significant potential benefits for both readers and authors of research articles.

Readers, including researchers at institutions that cannot afford subscriptions to all of the relevant professional journals, benefit by being able to freely access manuscripts of articles by ASU faculty. This access can help to accelerate the research and discovery process in various fields.

Authors benefit by having a larger readership of their work.  Open access articles are more easily discovered by researchers using online tools such as Google Scholar, and are more easily linked to and discussed in public forums. This could lead to more citations to their articles. Some studies show a citation advantage for open access articles, ranging from small to more than 500 percent. All such studies show an increase in readership.

Research funders are increasingly supporting such efforts as well. The National Institutes of Health have required open access for funded research articles since 2008, and a wave of other US agencies have followed suit.

What other institutions have open access policies?

Faculties at many universities have similar policies, including Harvard University, MIT, Caltech, Duke University, Oregon State University, University of Arizona, University of Colorado, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, University of Kansas, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the entire University of California System. MIT has created a list of universities in the United States that have policies.

Would an Open Access policy affect where I can publish my work?

No. Any policy we create will not mandate publication in open access journals or any other venues. ASU faculty members will be free to choose the journals in which they publish. 

How have publishers responded to these kinds of policies?

Most publishers currently allow their authors to post the final accepted manuscripts in institutional or disciplinary repositories, though sometimes the publisher requests that access is restricted through an embargo period that can generally vary from six to twenty-four months. Most existing open access policy implementation plans take these publisher policies into consideration when depositing articles into a repository.

Does the ASU Libraries support this initiative?

Yes! The ASU Libraries has a long history of promoting and supporting open access awareness and activities. In fact, in 2010, the ASU Libraries’ Librarians Assembly passed an Open Access Resolution, declaring their commitment for open access. The libraries also created and manage the ASU Digital Repository.

Why should I use the ASU Digital Repository when I already deposit my articles in other repositories/sharing platforms?

Libraries have traditionally committed to archiving and preserving the scholarly works in their collections. This is also true of the works deposited in the ASU Digital Repository and separates such institutional based repositories from social networking sites and discipline based repositories.

Commercial sites like Academia.edu or Research Gate are social networking platforms whose primary aim is to connect researchers with common interests and are not open access repositories. Their terms of service make it clear they could alter their service model or terminate the service without notice. Disciplinary repositories such as arXiv, PubMed Central, and SSRN have a long track record and there is every expectation that they will be around for a long time. However, each of them is subject to uncertain funding from volunteer contributors or the whims of government spending. It is conceivable that these could shut down at any time and the works deposited there would disappear.

Would the policy apply to co-authored papers?

Yes. In the case of co-authored articles, ASU faculty authors will need to decide the degree to which they want to seek permission from co-authors before depositing the manuscript, but we envision the policy would cover co-authored articles and there would be an expectation that those works will be deposited into the ASU Digital Repository.

Who can I contact with questions regarding the Open Access Task Force work?

Please contact Task Force Chair, Helene Ossipov.

Does the policy apply to me if I don’t have a grant?

No. This policy is voluntary for authors who do not have a grant, or whose funders do not have an open access requirement.

The policy applies automatically to authors who accept grants from funding agencies which have open or public access requirement for research results.

What funding agencies require open access?

In 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released an executive order for all federal agencies with budgets of over $100 million to develop plans "to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication and requiring researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research.” A comprehensive guide to these funding agencies and their policies is available here.

Additionally, many non-governmental funding agencies are requiring open access to research results as a condition of funding, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wellcome Trust. The Open Research Funders Group is another good resource for learning about funding organizations with an open access requirement.

What do I have to do to comply with this policy?

When ASU faculty members publish an article, they should also work with the ASU Library to deposit the final accepted manuscript of that article into the ASU Digital Repository, as well as any repository required by a funder. Once in the repository, the article manuscript will be made freely accessible, taking into account any publisher embargo periods on such versions. The manuscript will have a descriptive record associated with it in the repository that includes a reference to the published version and the journal in which it appears.

Who will be responsible for the staffing and technology required to implement the policy?

ASU Library already manages the ASU Digital Repository, which will easily accommodate the deposit of article manuscripts by ASU faculty. ASU Library personnel will work partner with the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development and the Office of the Provost to promote and implement our ASU Open Access Policy, including tracking the publication of ASU faculty articles, working with faculty members to deposit their article manuscripts, monitoring publisher embargoes, maintaining use statistics for faculty authors, and ensuring the repository is functioning at optimal levels to facilitate the discoverability of article manuscripts.

Will there be any penalty for authors who do not deposit their article manuscripts?

ASU does not impose a penalty. However, funding agencies with open access requirements may withhold future funding from authors who do not comply.

What kinds of work does this apply to?

For most authors, it applies to scholarly articles. Such articles are typically published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and conference proceedings. However, other works may fall under the policy if they are the primary method of disseminating research results funded by a grant with an open access requirement.

Many written products are not encompassed under this specific notion of the scholarly article, such as books, popular articles, commissioned articles, fiction and poetry, encyclopedia entries, ephemeral writings, lecture notes, lecture videos, or other copyrighted works. The ASU Open Access Policy does not impact these kinds of works, unless the authors chooses to include them in the ASU Digital Repository.

What version of the paper is submitted under this policy?

The final accepted manuscript of the article; that is, the author’s manuscript with any changes made as a result of the peer-review process, but prior to publisher’s copy-editing or formatting.

Does the policy apply to articles I’ve already written?

The policy does not apply to articles that were completed before the policy was adopted. The policy also does not apply to any articles you write after leaving ASU.