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University of Pennsylvania Faculty Open-Access Statement of Principles for Scholarly Articles

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September 13, 2011, Volume 58, No. 03

A Committee on Open Access Publishing was appointed by the Provost and Senior Vice Provost for Research in December 2009 to examine the status of open access publishing practices and to make recommendations for establishing procedures to  promote open access that better serve the Penn community and the general public. (See Almanac March 3, 2010, Volume 56, Number 26.) In May 2010 the Committee presented its recommendations to the Provost, the Senior Vice Provost for Research and the Council of Deans. Between September 2010 and April 2011 these recommendations were discussed with the faculty of the schools across the University. In May 2011, the recommendations in the form of a Statement of Principles were endorsed by the Faculty Senate. The Statement is published below and is effective immediately. We would like to thank the Committee Members for their hard work and commitment to adopting open access practices at the University. We would also like to thank the Library staff for their early and continuing efforts to work with faculty to implement Penn’s open access repository, ScholarlyCommons.

                              —Vincent Price, Provost
                              —Steven J. Fluharty, Senior Vice Provost for Research

University of Pennsylvania
Faculty Open-Access Statement of Principles for Scholarly Articles

The University of Pennsylvania is committed to disseminating research and scholarship as widely as possible. The Faculty of the University fully supports the University’s commitment to open access to research. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty Senate endorses the following Statement of Principles:

Every person who conducts research at the University of Pennsylvania is strongly encouraged to grant to the University of Pennsylvania nonexclusive permission to make publicly available his or her scholarly articles for the purpose of open dissemination. Effective as of the date of endorsement by the Faculty Senate, faculty and other researchers will be invited, at their discretion, to grant to the University of Pennsylvania a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide right and license to exercise any and all rights necessary under copyright to reproduce, distribute, display and otherwise disseminate, in any medium now known or hereinafter invented, each of his or her scholarly articles, provided that the scholarly articles are not sold or licensed by the University for compensation, and to authorize others to do the same on the same terms and with the same limitations. Faculty who do not submit articles for open dissemination are encouraged to notify the Penn Libraries, through a process made simple and accessible by the University. Authors are encouraged to seek the express, affirmative, written consent of all co-authors of a scholarly article before submitting the scholarly article to the Penn Libraries for open dissemination; however, the University may disseminate a scholarly article if all of the co-authors and co-owners of the copyright in the scholarly article who are members of the Standing Faculty, Standing Faculty Clinician Educators or Research Faculty, grant nonexclusive permission to the University, through an express, affirmative consent process to be developed.

The Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania endorses the principle of open access because they recognize the advantages of free access to new knowledge for the authors and the community. It is expected that, in most cases, faculty will choose open access as the best mechanism to rapidly and globally disseminate their work. To this end, the Faculty expects that the University will provide sufficient resources to facilitate this process and sufficient information and expertise to accomplish the goals of open access with the minimum inconvenience and expense to the author(s).

Submitting authors are encouraged to make available a digital copy of the “final version” of the scholarly article, at no charge, to the Penn Libraries, in one or more standard formats (such as PDF) as the libraries may request, and no later than the date of publication of the scholarly article.  If, however, the final version is already publicly available through other open access means (e.g., another open access repository or an open access journal), or if there is a legal obligation to make the scholarly article publicly available through other means (e.g., depositing a copy in PubMed Central or other government repository), the submitting author(s) may provide a digital copy to the Penn Libraries. The “final version” means the author’s manuscript with any changes made as a result of the peer-review process, but prior to any publisher’s copy-editing or formatting.  For articles and comments intended for publication in student-edited law reviews and journals, the “final version” is the version after all editing by the student journal editors, or its equivalent. The author(s) are strongly encouraged to notify the Penn Libraries of the location of and/or link to the scholarly article once it has been made public elsewhere.

The Penn Libraries will make the scholarly articles it receives available to the public in Penn ScholarlyCommons and/or a similar open-access repository or repositories. If a Penn faculty author (or if no Penn faculty member is an author, the submitting author) requests an embargo, the Penn Libraries will embargo the scholarly article for the requested time period, before making it available to the public, except when (1) the author has a legal obligation to make the scholarly article publicly available within an earlier time period, the embargo should not exceed that earlier time period; or (2) the publisher of the publication within which such scholarly article appears makes such scholarly article freely available to the public for further reproduction or distribution, the embargo period should terminate.  In any case, the requested embargo period should not exceed twelve months after acceptance of the scholarly article for publication.

In keeping with this Statement of Principles, the Provost’s Office and the Penn Libraries will develop and monitor an implementation plan and web-based services to make faculty participation in open access and dissemination as convenient as possible.  This Statement of Principles will be reviewed regularly to ensure its success.

 

Committee on Open Access Publishing

Kevin Werbach, The Wharton School, Chair  
Marjorie Bowman, Perelman School of Medicine
Peter Decherney, School of Arts and Sciences
Al Filreis, School of Arts and Sciences
J. Matthew Hartley, Graduate School of Education
John B. Hogenesch, Perelman School of Medicine
Gary A. Molander, School of Arts and Sciences
Jonathan M. Smith, School of Engineering and Applied Science
R. Polk Wagner, Law School
Terri E. Weaver, School of Nursing
Rachel Weinberger, School of Design 
Mandy Shoemaker, Graduate Student

Ex-Officio members:

Robert Firestone, Office of General Counsel
Eric Halpern, Penn Press
H. Carton Rogers, Penn Libraries
Josie Rook, Office of the Vice Provost for Research

ScholarlyCommons and Open Access Publishing

http://repository.upenn.edu

ScholarlyCommons is the University’s open-access repository of research by members of the Penn community. Managed by the Penn Libraries, ScholarlyCommons currently includes over 15,000 papers submitted by faculty and researchers from more than 20 schools and centers. Library staff are available to provide direct support to faculty who plan to contribute their scholarship to the repository. Services include assistance with:

• understanding copyright and permissions

• the use of an “author addendum” to a publisher agreement

• collecting and uploading articles to the Repository

• embargo options

Faculty are encouraged to visit the ScholarlyCommons website for additional information (http://repository.upenn.edu/faq.html) or to contact Shawn Martin, Scholarly Communication Librarian, shawnmar@pobox.upenn.edu or at (215) 573-4207, for a personal consultation.


Almanac - September 13, 2011, Volume 58, No. 03