Council Supports Open Access

"At its March 15 meeting, the Faculty Council [of Emory University] unanimously voted to adopt a statement in support of a Universitywide open access policy to enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty authored scholarly articles. This vote expresses the Council’s support for the principle of open access as official University policy. It calls for the creation of a digital repository for Emory scholarship, including an “opt-in” approach to faculty participation and a commit- ment to minimizing administrative burden by “harvesting” Emory faculty work already available in existing repositories. Pending administrative approval of the principle expressed in the statement, according to Rick Luce, director of the university libraries, library staff would require some four months to review Emory’s existing Electronic Theses and Dissertations system and assess how it might be adapted for the new repository, as well as evaluate other open-source products that might also be used. A prototype for the project would then be developed for testing...."