Report of the Commission on the Future of the UC Berkeley Library (October 2013)

"Campus should invest in an office to help scholars disseminate their work broadly; to support and educate faculty and students about fair use, copyright, and open access; and to promote a more sustainable publishing ecosystem for scholarly communication....The Library must continue to save money and leverage expenditure, while developing innovative ways to ensure that all resources are managed prudently. In pursuing the recommendations of the Subcommittee on Scholarly Dissemination, the Library should ensure that open access and other initiatives are designed to promote eventual savings....In many fields, opportunities to publish in peer-reviewed open access outlets remain limited, expensive, or otherwise unattractive. The Library can play an important role in facilitating the transition to a more sustainable system of scholarly dissemination. The Library—indeed, all university libraries—will benefit directly from such changes....While we are heartened by the July 2013 adoption of an open-access policy by the systemwide Academic Senate of the University of California, there is more that can and should be done. Below we recommend several specific things the UC Berkeley Library should do to help spread the knowledge discovered at Berkeley throughout society....Devote additional resources to developing, publicizing, and providing ongoing support for alternative publishing platforms, including open access online journals edited by UCB scholars....Devote additional resources to developing, publicizing, and providing ongoing support for alternative publishing platforms, including open access online journals edited by UCB scholars....Critical assistance to UCB scholars may also include helping faculty understand and comply with the system-wide faculty open access policy that has recently been adopted by UC...."