Students as leaders in open access advocacy

"This is the story of ongoing student efforts to realize an open access (OA) policy at the University of Washington (UW). Among other superlatives, UW receives more federal research dollars1 than any other public university in the nation––making it a logical place for an initiative to facilitate free and public access to scholarly outputs. In 2014, UW received $1.39 billion in funding––a 12% increase from 2013. Like other large U.S. universities, UW also hosts diverse faculty interests, an understaffed and underfunded institutional repository, and highly active student and faculty governments––but also, as we have come to find, an organic, self-assembled student interest in OA...."