Actions Faculty Can Take
As an Author, Reviewer or Editor:
- Influence the decisions of the editorial boards of which you are a member.
- As a journal editor, take an interest in the business aspects of your journal; if warranted, consider moving your journal to a non-commercial publisher or creating an alternative journal. Understand the larger view: all scholars, in all fields of scholarship, are in this together.
- As an author, alter your own practice when you negotiate with publishers. Modify, if appropriate, any contract you sign with a commercial publisher to ensure your right to use your work, including posting on a public archive. Sample language from the Boston Library Consortium (which has been endorsed by the UConn Office of the Attorney General) and from SPARC.
- Examine the pricing, copyright, and licensing agreements of any commercially published journal you contribute to as an author, reviewer, or editor. The choices you make about where to publish, and about service as a reviewer or member of an editorial board will make a difference if you explain why you are accepting or declining. Influence your colleagues to do the same.
- Learn about alternatives to commercial publication for both individual articles and journals as a whole.
As a Soceity Member:
- Encourage your associations to explore alternatives to contracting or selling publications to commercial publishers.
- Encourage your associations to maintain reasonable prices for their published products and to establish access terms that are friendly to faculty, libraries and other users.
- Encourage your associations and societies to consider creating enhanced competitors to expensive commercial publications.
- Actively support your society's electronic publishing program by submitting papers, reviewing, and serving on editorial boards.
- Intentionally influence the decisions of your scholarly association boards. Speak your mind and encourage your colleagues to do the same.
As a Member of the Campus Community:
- Encourage discussion of scholarly communication issues and proposals for change in your departments and schools.
- Attend campus events and learn more. Talk with your colleagues here on campus and elsewhere.
- Investigate your campus intellectual property policies and participate actively in their development.
As a Faculty Member:
- Become a savvy consumer. Consider price, value, and local use when you advise the library on journal purchases and cancellations.
- Support efforts within your field and within the broader scholarly community to win back control of scholarly communication.
- Support the library's cancellation of expensive low-use titles and encourage colleagues to do the same. In general, support your library's efforts to take cost into consideration in making decisions about journal subscriptions.
- Support your library's participation in projects that seek to transform scholarly publishing in accord with academic values, such as SPARC.
- Invite library participation in faculty departmental meetings and graduate seminars to discuss scholarly communication issues.
- Include electronic publications that meet standards of quality in promotion and tenure discussions and decisions.
- Include librarians when you meet with a publisher's representative.
- Familiarize yourselves with studies of journal cost effectiveness, such as those conducted by Cornell and the University of Wisconsin.
Adapted from Iowa State and SPARC web pages