University of Pennsylvania Almanac, 04/26/11

University of Pennsylvania Faculty Senate Executive Committee (SEC) Actions from Wednesday, April 20, 2011: "Open Access: Senior Vice Provost for Research Steve Fluharty updated SEC on the Open Access draft Statement of Principles for Scholarly Articles....Dr. Fluharty reported that there are many models of Open Access that have been adopted by other peer universities and explained the pros and cons of the various models. Dr. Fluharty stated that Penn started looking at Open Access in the fall of 2008 and charged a committee to recommend guidelines in fall of 2009. He reported that the Open Access committee developed a draft policy in the spring of 2010 and solicited feedback from all 12 schools this past academic year. He explained that the Open Access committee preferred a Statement of Principles rather than a policy; to advocate and promote this as a voluntary program to disseminate research and scholarship as widely as possible. He reviewed the Open Access committee recommendations: participating faculty would grant Penn nonexclusive permission to make publicly available scholarly articles for open dissemination; faculty will provide a digital copy of the final version of the scholarly article to the Penn Libraries no later than the date of publication; Penn Libraries will deposit in Penn Scholarly Commons and/or similar open access repositories; faculty may request an embargo period not to exceed 12 months; the Open Access program is voluntary and faculty participation will be monitored and the guidelines reviewed periodically. Dr. Fluharty reported that the University is willing to put resources into this program once the guidelines are adopted. SEC members had a robust discussion on the ambiguous wording in the draft Statement of Principles for Scholarly Articles document....SEC members unanimously agreed that a vote of support for the draft Statement of Principles be tabled until the May SEC meeting to allow time to make wording changes to the document to ensure that the language is clear and encourages participation."