University poised to make professors' research freely accessible online - The GW Hatchet

abernard102@gmail.com 2015-02-18

Summary:

"Top administrators will decide this spring whether GW should make research by faculty members freely available online. The Faculty Senate narrowly approved a resolution Friday to make professors’ scholarly works 'open-access resources,' which means they’d be available to the public through a digital platform that GW’s library created in the past year. If administrators and the Board of Trustees approve it, the change would make it easier for GW to archive research completed on campus, University Librarian Geneva Henry said. 'This lets people know what our research is and what they are working on,' she added. 'It is a huge benefit for underdeveloped nations that cannot possibly afford these journal subscriptions.' But members of the Faculty Senate have argued that an open-access policy could be difficult for professors who publish in journals that own the copyright to the scholarly works. Highly-regarded journals like the New England Journal of Medicine don’t allow researchers to make the reports available for free because they retain the work’s copyright. If faculty members are publishing in that type of journal, they’ll have to submit a waiver to the provost’s office. Henry said it would be easily accepted. More than 600 institutions around the country have adopted open-access policies, including some of GW’s peer schools like Duke and Northwestern universities. Gelman Library has struggled to pay for journal subscriptions, which grow more expensive by about 10 percent annually because of inflation. While open-access resources would allow the library to maintain work done at the University, it would still need to subscribe to journals to access work by researchers at other institutions. If more institutions move to open-access policies, it could put pressure on scholarly journals to change their business models. More schools have moved to open policies, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Provost Steven Lerman said he advocated for the change ..."

Link:

http://www.gwhatchet.com/2015/02/17/university-poised-to-make-professors-research-freely-accessible-online/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.policies oa.george_washington.u oa.ir oa.green oa.repositories oa.announcements

Date tagged:

02/18/2015, 13:05

Date published:

02/18/2015, 08:05