Penn State: Faculty Senate endorses open access research policy at final meeting of semester

"The Senate took a major step to affirm the University’s commitment to making Penn State research widely available to the public by endorsing a proposed policy supporting research submissions to open access journals.

Unlike the standard model of academic publishing, open access journals publish research that is freely accessible without a paywall and do not require subscription fees from universities in order for their researchers to submit articles for publication. The new policy encourages Penn State researchers to submit to open access publications, but maintains that researchers have the freedom to submit their work to publications of their choice, including both open access journals and journals with a more traditional fee-based publishing model.

Promoting open access research publishing has been a topic of discussion since 2015, when the Senate passed a resolution in support of open access publishing. ..."