Scholarly Communication: Local Response
The University of Connecticut Response
- Open Access Author Fund (2012)
- Signatory to the Hathi Trust Fund (2011)
- Signatory to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and the Humanities (2011)
- Formation of the Cross Campus Scholarly Communications Copyright Team formed – 2010
- UConn Scholarly Communication Events & Forums: 2008, 2004, 2003, 2001
- UConn Resolutions:
Graduate Faculty Council, Resolution on Author Rights and the Institutional Repository, March 19, 2008
University Senate Meeting, Feb. 9, 2004 (pdf) (see pages 6-7)
- UConn articles / publications / brochures
- Digital Commons @ UConn (Institutional Repository)
DigitalCommons@UConn is a digital repository of the intellectual output of the University of Connecticut's faculty, staff, and students. It can accommodate virtually any publication, presentation, or production in electronic format.
What Can Faculty Do?
Faculty can influence the current climate in both the short-term and the long-term. In the short-term, faculty can learn what the highest priced journals are, and find alternative places to publish, review, and/or serve as editor.
- Contact editors and publishers and tell them why research will not be submitted to their publications.
- Seek out alternative places to publish research - journals and repositories where research is more affordable or entirely free.
- Regardless of the journal you publish in, you can adopt manuscript contract language which allows you to retain some copyright privileges and so make your research available to those who cannot afford the journals (an ever-increasing number of institutions and researchers).
- Long-term, you can work within your institutions to establish institutional archives/repositories of your research, such as eScholarship at the University of California or the DSpace project at MIT.
- You can establish new journals with the help of SPARC, to compete with the high priced titles in your field, and work with your professional societies to do the same.
- Within your institutions,
faculty can work to change the tenure system to reduce the emphasis on publishing
in exorbitant, unsustainable, commercial journals.
A more complete list of actions which faculty can take is available here.
- Actions Faculty Can Take
An extensive listing of specific steps faculty can take to protect and regain control of research.
- Boston Library Consortium's "Agreement to Extend Author’s Rights"
"Gives authors and their employing institutions non-exclusive rights to use, distribute, and reproduce material in electronic digital or print form in activities connected with the author’s academic and professional activities. The amendment also supports placement of material in institutional repositories."
- Recommended
language for manuscript contracts
Keep control of your research - from the University of Kansas
- Creative Commons
Easily create your own copyright license and then download it to attach to your personal or institutional web site.
- Create Change (ARL and SPARC)
An ARL resource for faculty and librarian action to reclaim scholarly communication. See Especially Change and You
- Declaring Independence: A Guide to Creating
Community-Controlled Science Journals
A guide to creating and maintaining alternative journals, from the organization (SPARC) that already has. The primary intended audience is journal editors.
- Guides to Business Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal
and for Converting a Subscription-based Journal to Open Access
from the Open Society Institute and SPARC
- Journal Declarations of Independence
With background information on why the editors of these journals left their commercial publishers to form new journals
What Can Librarians Do?
Although ultimately the answer will depend largely on faculty and researchers, librarians have already made an impact in several ways, and continue to do so.
- Educating faculty and researchers is the most fundamental and important task before us
- Supporting current alternative publishing projects will help establish long-term viable competition to the worst offenders in the crisis
- Supporting our local repository which is interoperable could be the long-term goal for all higher education institutions
- Understanding the
implications of the licensing of electronic resources
and using licenses to our advantage is crucial
Hints from ACRL: the ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit and Transforming Libraries - Issue 10: Educating Faculty on Scholarly Communication Issues (ARL Publication, September 1999)