SPARC AND SCIENCE COMMONS RELEASE GUIDE TO CREATING INSTITUTIONAL OPEN ACCESS POLICIES

[Jennifer McLennan <jennifer@arl.org>]

For immediate release
April 28, 2008

For more information, contact:

Jennifer McLennan, SPARC
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121
jennifer@arl.org

Kaitlin Thaney, Science Commons
(617) 395-7413
kaitlin@creativecommons.org

SPARC AND SCIENCE COMMONS RELEASE GUIDE TO CREATING INSTITUTIONAL 
OPEN ACCESS POLICIES

New whitepaper offers ten simple steps to maximizing campus-wide 
research impact

Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA - April 28, 2008 - SPARC and 
Science Commons have released "Open Doors and Open Minds: What 
faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work 
through their institution." The new white paper assists 
institutions in adopting policies that ensure the widest 
practical exposure for scholarly works produced, such as that 
adopted by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in February.

Co-authored by SPARC and Science Commons, "Open Doors and Open 
Minds" is a how-to guide for faculty, administrators, and 
advocates to formulate an institutional license grant that 
delivers open access to campus research outputs.  Some 
institutions are considering such policies as they work to comply 
with new requirements for public access from national agencies 
including the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The white paper details the motivations behind the Harvard 
policy, offers a concise explanation of U.S. Copyright Law and 
how it relates to the scholarly publishing process, and makes 
specific suggestions for faculty and advocates to pursue a 
campus-wide policy. The guide offers a detailed plan of action, a 
series of institutional license options, and a 10-point list of 
actions for realizing a policy and adopting the right University 
License to meet the institution's particular needs.

Three different licenses, which are granted to the institution by 
the author, are offered for consideration:

Case 1. Broad license grant - a non-exclusive, perpetual, 
irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise all of the author's 
exclusive rights under copyright, including the right to grant 
sublicenses.

Case 2. Intermediate license grant - involves license 
restrictions that modify the scope of the license grant in Case 
1.

Case 3. Narrow license grant - grants to the university only the 
right to deposit the article in the institutional repository, and 
to make it available through the repository Web site.

The paper also recommends mandatory deposit of articles in 
institutional repositories. Mandatory deposit may be adopted 
regardless of the licensing policy chosen.

"The Harvard policy is a recognition that the Internet creates 
opportunities to radically accelerate distribution and impact for 
scholarly works," said John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science 
at Creative Commons. "As more universities move to increase the 
reach of their faculty's work, it's important that faculty 
members have a clear understanding of the key issues involved and 
the steps along the path that Harvard has trail-blazed. This 
paper is a foundational document for universities and faculty to 
use as they move into the new world of Open Access scholarly 
works."

"Everyone - faculty, librarians, administrators, and other 
advocates - has the power to initiate change at their 
institution," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. 
"By championing an open access policy, helping to inform your 
colleagues about the benefits of a policy change, and identifying 
the best license and most effective path to adoption, it can be 
done."

"Open Doors and Open Minds" and the 10-step action list is openly 
available on the SPARC Web site at 
http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/guides/opendoors_v1.shtml .

For further details on the sponsors' advocacy and author rights 
programs, please visit SPARC at http://www.arl.org/sparc and 
Science Commons at http://www.sciencecommons.org.

##

Science Commons

Science Commons designs strategies and tools for faster, more 
efficient web-enabled scientific research. Science Commons 
identifies unnecessary barriers to research, crafts policy 
guidelines and legal agreements to lower those barriers, and 
develops technology to make research data and materials easier to 
find and use. The goal of Science Commons is to speed the 
translation of data into discovery and to unlock the value of 
research so more people can benefit from the work scientists are 
doing. Science Commons is online at http://www.sciencecommons.org

SPARC

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), 
with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance 
of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to 
create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC's 
advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs 
encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web 
at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

--------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc