Tag: UC Policies

More than 2600 electronic dissertations and theses (ETDs) by UC Berkeley authors are now available on eScholarship dating back to 2009. UC Berkeley dissertations continue to be available on ProQuest Theses and Dissertations (a subscription database) and on the Library digital repository. By making them more available on eScholarship, however, these dissertations will be more easily discoverable via Google. This step towards greater open access is consistent with the Graduate Division’s longstanding position — one shared by the Berkeley Library — that “UC Berkeley upholds the tradition that [Berkeley scholars] have an obligation to make [their] research available to other scholars.”

The Academic Senate of the University of California passed an Open Access Policy on July 24, 2013, ensuring that future research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of UC will be made available to the public at no charge. The policy, which covers more than 8,000 UC faculty, will allow faculty members to make as many as 40,000 publications a year widely and publicly available.

Open Access (OA) is scholarly literature that is free, digital, and available to anyone online. Anyone, anywhere, with access to the Internet may read, download, and copy an OA article. The new UC policy follows more than 175 other universities (including Harvard University) who have adopted similar so-called “green” open access policies. Green OA allows authors to publish, as they always have, in traditional commercial or society journals and then post an authors’ version on eScholarship. That research then becomes widely available and discoverable via tools like Google.

In the full Academic Senate statement on the new policy, Richard A. Schneider, UCSF Professor and chair of the Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication at UCSF states, “The ten UC campuses generate around 2-3% of all the peer-reviewed articles published in the world every year, and this policy will make many of those articles freely available to anyone who is interested anywhere, whether they are colleagues, students, or members of the general public.”

What does this mean for Berkeley faculty? Three campuses (UCSF, UCLA, UCI) will move forward with the policy this fall, with Berkeley joining in Fall 2014. The Library will develop supporting materials to assist Berkeley faculty.

For more information on the new policy see:

May 23, 2012: The University of California, San Francisco becomes the first UC campus to implement an open access policy. Under the proposed open access policy, UCSF faculty will make electronic versions of their scientific articles freely available to the public via an open-access repository such as eScholarship. The vote by the UCSF faculty senate was unanimous, making UCSF the largest scientific institution and the first public university to adopt an open-access policy. In February 2008, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences were the first university of adopt an open access policy. Since then, dozens of other universities worldwide have adopted institutional open access policies.

• UCSF Implements Policy to Make Research Papers Freely Available to the Public (UCSF News Center)

Meantime, a discussion of a UC systemwide open access policy is under discussion by representatives to the UC Academic Senate Committee on Libraries and Scholarly Communication. Read more: UC Open Access Policy Proposal.

February 2012: The California Digital Library (CDL) and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) have announced a partnership that focuses on supporting open source publishing infrastructure. As a result of the partnership, CDL will assist PKP’s “ongoing development and support of its open source software suite” which includes Open Journal Systems (OPS), Open Conference Systems (OCS), Open Harvester System (OHS), and Open Monograph Press (OMP). For more information, see the joint press release (PDF).

February 2012: As has been reported in the past (see posts for June 9, 2010 and August 31, 2010), the University of California and the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) have been engaged in a protracted (and somewhat public) negotiation regarding a proposed increase in UC’s subscription costs for NPG journals. UC and NPG have been meeting regularly over the last several months and, in an effort to provide UC faculty and librarians with the latest information on the discussions, a document “University of California Update on Discussions with Nature Publishing Group” (PDF) as been posted on the UC Reshaping Scholarly Communication website.

After broad consultation, the California Digital Library (CDL) has cancelled the systemwide license to the Informa Healthcare (IHC) journals. According to the CDLINFO News, three important principles were the basis for this decision: “the reality of UC library budgets and a mandate to reduce consortial spending, the use of clear value metrics to inform decisions of fiscal responsibility, and the need for sustainable pricing in the scholarly publishing marketplace.”

Additional information is available on CDL’s Challenges to Licensing page.

The University of California and Nature Publishing Group have issued a joint statement on their on-going licensing negotations. The two organizations have agreed to work together in the coming months to address their mutual challenges, including an exploration of potential new approaches and evolving publishing models.

See also coverage in The Daily Californian (8/30/10).

June 9, 2010: The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) proposes to quadruple the price of a UC license for Nature and its 67 affiliated journals. The magnitude of such a price increase for academic journals is unprecedented and unless the University of California and NPG can reach an acceptable pricing compromise, the UC would have to cancel its subscription to Nature and NPG publications, journals which are among the most prestigious of academic journals.

The executive director of the California Digital Library, along with the chair of the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication of the Academic Senate and the convener of the University Librarians Council have prepared a letter for the UC faculty describing this price increase and warning of a potential faculty-led boycott of NPG.

Some facts and information outlined in the letter:

• In the past six years, UC authors have contributed some 5,300 articles to NPG journals, 638 in the flagship journal Nature.
• UC author contributions have helped shape the prestige of NPG journals.
• UC faculty also contribute a significant amount of time serving as reviewers, editors and advisory board members.
• A fact sheet on UC Libraries Systemwide Journal Subscriptions and a list of NPG journals licensed by UC is also included in the letter.

Further reading:

• Chronicle of Higher Education (6/8/10) (UC access only)
• The Great Beyond: the Nature blog (6/9/10)
• CDLINFO news (6/9/10)
• Public statement from NPG (6/9/10)
• UC response to NPG (6/10/10)