There are now two official open access (OA) policies at Berkeley:
- Back in July 2013, the Academic Senate adopted the Open Access Policy for the Academic Senate of the University of California to ensure that research articles authored by faculty at all 10 UC campuses are made available free of cost to the general public and researchers worldwide.
- On October 23 of this year, UC issued a Presidential Open Access Policy expanding the reach of the Academic Senate policy by including all UC employees and encouraging them to freely share their research publications worldwide. Among those affected by the expanded policy are clinical faculty, lecturers, staff researchers, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and librarians.
What does this mean for Graduate Students?
The Academic Senate policy was officially launched on November 17 with the implementation of “harvester” software that sends an automated email message to to faculty listing eligible articles which they authored or co-authored; faculty are then prompted to verify (or reject) the articles and instructed on how to post their publications to eScholarship, UC’s OA publishing platform. If you, as a graduate student, co-authored a paper with an Academic Senate faculty any time after July 2013, that article may be posted to eScholarship which provides free global access to your publication. Wider dissemination of Berkeley research is not only a public good but also results in greater impact and recognition for researchers. Ask your faculty collaborators if they’ve posted their publications and, if not, offer to help them!
The Presidential Open Access Policy covers graduate student work if the student was an employee of the university at the time their article was published. Until eligible UC employees are folded into the harvester software used for Academic Senate faculty, you are encouraged to post your eligible articles using the eScholarship deposit mechanism. See Deposit your content in eScholarship for more details.
Keep in mind that your articles are automatically covered by the policy; you are not required to amend your author agreement and you do not need to pay any additional article processing charges.
Remind me: What is Open Access?
OA literature is free, digital, and available to anyone online. With OA literature, there is the potential for greater access, thus more readers and greater impact. There are two different approaches to open access: Gold and Green. Gold OA provides immediate access on the publisher’s website. In the Green OA model (also known as “self archiving”) authors continue to publish as they always have in all the same journals; once the article has been published in a traditional journal, the author then posts a “final author version” of the article to a repository. The UC Open Access Policy falls under the Green OA model.
For more information
- Open Access: UC Open Access Policy
- For individual questions, contact oapolicy@lists.berkeley.edu.
- For in-person assistance come to a Library “upload-a-thon”
- Tuesdays and Wednesdays
- 4pm-5pm
- Library Data Lab, 189 Doe
- These drop-in sessions will run from November 17- December 16; January 19-February 24 (and beyond, if necessary).
Many subject special libraries are also offering “upload-a-thons” (see For more help).
Margaret Phillips, Education-Psychology Library
contact me at mphillip [at] library.berkeley.edu