University senate makes decision on research funding

"The [Purdue University Faculty Senate] will also be voting on the open access policy, which would allow for faculty publications to be viewed for free online, at today’s meeting. Paul Schwab, director of natural resources and environmental science, said he is fearful that faculty will take open access the wrong way because of the negative connotation usually associated with the terminology. “Journals that are open access generally means that they’re not peer reviewed and if we don’t publish in peer reviewed journals we’re not anywhere,” Schwab said. “This is not what this open access initiative is about.” The proposed policy would take previously published articles in a peer-reviewed journal and then load these onto e-pubs, the online access site Purdue plans to use. This would allow for the prestige and tenure-track requirements that come with being published in an accredited journal, but take away the need for University employees and faculty throughout the world to pay to see Purdue research. However, if this policy is approved, there could still be a problem of copyright issues, Schwab said. Many scholastic publications maintain ownership of the articles for over a year or may only allow for the final draft, but not the published article, to be put online openly...."