UA faculty backs free access to work

FAYETTEVILLE -- Faculty at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville voted unanimously Wednesday to adopt a new open access policy that would make much of its future scholarly work freely available online.

The university's faculty senate approved a policy giving UA non-exclusive distribution rights for articles voluntarily submitted by faculty as part of a new "open access institutional repository."

Scholarly articles published in some academic journals require a subscription to be viewed. The policy states that faculty members "are encouraged" to submit articles to the open access repository.

Excluded are articles completed before adoption of the policy or where a faculty member "entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement" before adoption of the policy.

Provost Sharon Gaber had appointed a committee to study the creation of such a policy. Faculty members were presented with information describing how "free, immediate, online availability" of research articles is becoming a trend.

Metro on 05/10/2015

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