UCSF Implements Policy to Make Research Papers Freely Accessible to Public; University of California San Francisco, 5/23/12

Kristen Bole, University of California San Francisco; UCSF Implements Policy to Make Research Papers Freely Accessible to Public:

"The UCSF Academic Senate has voted to make electronic versions of current and future scientific articles freely available to the public, helping to reverse decades of practice on the part of medical and scientific journal publishers to restrict access to research results.

The unanimous vote of the faculty senate makes UCSF the largest scientific institution in the nation to adopt an open-access policy and among the first public universities to do so.

“Our primary motivation is to make our research available to anyone who is interested in it, whether they are members of the general public or scientists without costly subscriptions to journals,” said Richard A. Schneider, PhD, chair of the UCSF Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, who spearheaded the initiative at UCSF. “The decision is a huge step forward in eliminating barriers to scientific research,” he said. “By opening the currently closed system, this policy will fuel innovation and discovery, and give the taxpaying public free access to oversee their investments in research.”"

Faculty Move Forward on Open Access Policy; Duke Today, 3/21/10

Duke Today; Faculty Move Forward on Open Access Policy:

"In a unanimous vote, the Academic Council approved a resolution supporting a new open access repository for faculty scholarly writings, but asked that organizers return for more discussion when they have details in place about how the repository would be serviced.

The policy would place the final draft manuscript of future scholarly articles in an open access repository that would be available for use by the public. Faculty members have a right to opt-out of the repository at any time, and the repository would respect any embargo requested by the author or journal. The policy would be reviewed in three years to determine its effectiveness.

Open access is in line with the university’s commitment to disseminate the knowledge of the faculty, and Duke follows in the wake of peer institutions such as Harvard and MIT that have established similar policies.

But supporting it in theory is one thing, and faculty members said they want to hear more about the details in the fall."

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/03/accessvote.html