Scholarly Communication: Faculty Action / Support
Contents:
By and for UC
- Feb 15, 2007: Free-science movement gains a foothold at Berkeley, article by Barry Bergman in the Berkeleyan.
- Feb 7, 2007: UC Executive Vice Provost Rory Hume issued a request for review of proposed University of California Open Access Policy to the Chancellors and Senate Chair John Oakley. This policy proposal and related materials were prepared by an ad hoc working group appointed by Provost Hume in response to a proposal unanimously approved by the Academic Assembly and forwarded to President Dynes in May 2006 to adopt a policy — titled then as the "UC Faculty Scholarly Work Copyright Rights Policy" — which confirms UC faculty ownership of copyright of their scholarly work, but through which faculty would grant a limited and non-exclusive permission to the Regents to make work published in a scholarly journal or conference proceedings publicly accessible by posting it in an open, on-line repository of scholarly publications.
- UC's Academic Council Special Committee on Scholarly Communication developed several white papers for discussion by UC, now underway.
- UC Berkeley Faculty Conference on Scholarly Publishing, March 31, 2005. Break-out sessions allowed faculty to discuss concrete actions the campus might take to change the dynamics of scholarly communication.
- UC Berkeley Academic Senate adopts a Statement of Principles on Scholarly Publishing, March 2005 (PDF).
- UC Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee (SLASIAC) adopts Resolution I: The University's Role in Fostering Positive Change in Scholarly Communication.
- Letter of February 07, 2005 from UL Tom Leonard to UCB Faculty (PDF) announces the launch of eScholarship's Postprint Service.
- Letter of January 14, 2005 from Academic Council Chair George Blumenthal and the University Librarians to faculty regarding 2005 negotiations with commercial and society publishers (PDF).
- Letter of January 7, 2004, to UC Faculty from Lawrence Pitts, Chair of the UC Academic Senate, and the University Librarians at the successful conclusion of negotiations with Elsevier (PDF).
- Letter to UC Faculty from Lawrence Pitts, Chair of the UC Academic Senate setting out the critical problems faced in negotiations for access to electronic journals, October 15, 2003 (PDF).
- Letter from Chancellor Berdahl (PDF) and the UC Berkeley Academic Senate Library Committee to UC Berkeley on Libraries, September 2003 (PDF).
- The Emerging Influence of Technology on Scholarly Communication and Publishing: Planning for a Decade of Change, UC Systemwide Library Planning, August 2003.
- Reshaping Scholarly Communication: A UC website setting forth the issues, facts, and strategic actions being undertaken at UC. Also includes news and events, and resources for reference.
Who needs to act?
Moving to a new, sustainable model for scholarly publishing will require action by:
- Individuals (e.g., UC professors) have taken various action, including retaining copyright on all articles; voicing concerns over price to publishers for whom they do editorial work; refusing to act as author or editor for high-priced publishers; working with their societies to ensure that society journals are fairly priced, etc. See UC Professors Yamamoto's and Walter's call UC authors and editors to boycott high-priced journals.
- Academic departments as they review criteria used for promotion and tenure.
- Academic senates: e.g., Cornell senate resolution, UCSC resolution (PDF), UC Senate formation of the Academic Council Special Committee on Scholarly Publishing, UC Berkeley Academic Senate's Scholarly Publishing Statement of Principles (PDF).
- Research universities: e.g., creation of alternatives, including pre-print servers, post-print repositories, peer-reviewed open-access journals, and e-book publishing and collections. See MIT's DSpace and UC's eScholarship.
- Societies (e.g., some societies are moving their journals to open access publishers such as BioOne); the Academy of Learned Societies has a project to support creation in electronic form of monographs.
- Funding agencies (of note: several major funding agencies now support use of grant funds for paying fees to publish in open access journals, notably the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Foundation.)
There is a growing cadre of new models for publishing.
There are a growing number of organizations making statements in support of the open access model of publishing (e.g., the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions — IFLA Statement on Open Access).
There is also a growing number of organizations (e.g. Create Change, SPARC, and Creative Commons) offering and support for stakeholders at all stages of the publishing enterprise.
Note: This page is archival in nature and the content will not be updated. However, the links will be kept up to date as time permits.
