University of Ottawa Open Access Program

[Stevan Harnad <amsciforum@gmail.com>]

** Cross-Posted ** See also pertinent prior caveats:

"On Not Putting The Gold OA-Payment Cart Before The Green 
OA-Provision Horse"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/630-guid.html

"Why Provide OA Funding Rather Than Providing OA?"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/422-guid.html

"To Open Canadian Universities' Minds, Inform Them What They 
Need To Do"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/640-guid.html

"Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity: Mistaking intent 
for action?"
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2009/09/compact-for-open-access-publishing.html

University of Ottawa among North American leaders as it launches open access program

OTTAWA, December 8, 2009 -- The University of Ottawa is the first 
Canadian university to adopt a comprehensive open access program 
that supports free and unrestricted access to scholarly research.

The University's new program includes:

** a commitment to make the University's scholarly publications 
available online at no charge through the University's 
repository, uO Research; http://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/en/

** an author fund to help researchers defray open access fees 
charged by publishers; 
http://oa.uottawa.ca/uo-initiatives-afund.jsp?language=en

** a fund to support the creation of digital educational 
materials organized as courses and available to everyone online 
at no charge;

** support for the University of Ottawa Press's commitment to 
publishing a collection of open access books; and

** a research grant to support further research on the open 
access movement.

The University of Ottawa also becomes the first Canadian 
university to join the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity 
(COPE), http://www.oacompact.org/ adding its name to a list of 
prestigious institutions including Cornell University, Dartmouth 
College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. The 
signatories of this compact make a commitment to support open 
access journals that make articles available at no charge to 
everyone while providing the same services common to all 
scholarly journals, services such as management of the peer 
review process, production and distribution.

University of Ottawa researchers have already participated in 
many significant open access projects. These projects include 
developing the Canadian Creative Commons license, which ensures 
authors retain the right of attribution and that their work is 
accessible; under the leadership of Michael Geist and Ian Kerr, 
the publication of legal texts that are made available at no 
charge; and the founding of Open Medicine and Aporia, two open 
access journals in the fields of medicine and health sciences.

"I am proud that our university is the first one in the country 
to introduce a comprehensive open access program. Canada's 
university has become Canada's Open Access University," said 
Allan Rock, president and vice-chancellor at the University of 
Ottawa. "The fruit of our faculty's contributions to academic 
research will now be more visible, freely accessible and shared 
with the world."

Open access research can be easily accessed by anyone, anywhere, 
without the barrier of costly journal subscription or association 
membership fees. Broad dissemination of knowledge and research 
without access barriers is a great benefit to society as a whole.

For more information on the University of Ottawa's open access 
program, visit http://oa.uottawa.ca.