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Dartmouth College Joins Compact for Open Access Publication, and Will Support Author Fees
September 14th 2009
Dartmouth is joining UC Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, and Cornell in expressing support for making scholarly publishing openly accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Each institution will provide financial support for publishing in scholarly journals committed to free, open access on the Internet.
During the last few years, faculty, administration, librarians, and students have been engaged in a varied set of conversations on ways to bring Dartmouth scholarship and research to a wider reading audience and, as a result, strengthen its impact on the world. The Council on the Libraries has discussed related issues. The College signed the provosts’ open letter in support of the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006. Subsequently, a faculty-librarian team attended a national program on new models for scholarly publishing.
In 2007, the College adopted a publishing amendment that faculty are invited to use, as they wish, to alter the terms of their publishing contracts and retain elements of their copyright. Education on the amendment and “Open Access Week” activities have emphasized alternatives to traditional journal publishing terms. The passage into law of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy provided us further opportunities to engage with faculty on open access and to develop a publishing amendment tailored to that mandate.
The open access compact, which is being announced as a joint effort by MIT, UC Berkeley, Cornell, Harvard, and Dartmouth, is the natural next step in support of faculty participation in new publishing models. We have encouraged faculty to consider open access publishing. Now, the Provost’s Office and the Library have designated funds to support participation, on an exploratory basis. The following statement will be made public on Monday, September 14:
“We the undersigned universities recognize the crucial value of the services provided by scholarly publishers, the desirability of open access to the scholarly literature, and the need for a stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide open access to their journals’ contents. Those universities and funding agencies receiving the benefits of publisher services should recognize their collective and individual responsibility for that funding, and this recognition should be ongoing and public so that publishers can rely on it as a condition for their continuing operation.
Therefore, each of the undersigned universities commits to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in open access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds. We encourage other universities and research funding agencies to join us in this commitment, to provide a sufficient and sustainable funding basis for open access publication of the scholarly literature.”
In the current economic climate, we realize that publishers as well as institutions of higher education are under increased financial stress. We value the contribution that the publication process brings to the final scholarly work, as demonstrated by our long-term support of established journals, and want to support creative alternatives to traditional models. We believe that our participation will advance our collective goals.
A description of qualifying works and how to take advantage of this support will be forthcoming.
Download a WORD file of this announcement.
Dartmouth’s publishing amendment is available for download. Please contact Jeffrey Horrell, Elizabeth Kirk or Barbara DeFelice with questions.
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