Open Access refers to scholarly literature that is digital, online, free of charge and free of most copyright and reuse restrictions (Peter Suber).
For more information about open access see the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Open Access page.
There have been several important announcements around open access and scholarly publishing that are promising sources of deliberation among those recognizing the unsustainability in the current publishing system.
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has released a "Landscape Analysis" by publishing industry analyst Claudio Aspesi, examining recent shifts in scholarly publishing, particularly away from content provision, towards data analytics.
KU Libraries and the Shulenburger Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright are pleased to offer programs in support of Open Access Week, an international event to advance and celebrate openness in the academy.
Last March, Congress authorized $5M to support Open Educational Resources, to be administered by the Department of Education.
16,977
The number of researchers to date that have signed the pledge not to publish, review, or serve on editorial boards for Elsevier journals
94
The number of scholarly communities in KU ScholarWorks
72,328
The number of times the most popular KU ScholarWorks item, Greetings from the Teklimakan: a handbook of Modern Uyghur, has been downloaded
2009
The year that the KU Open Access Policy was approved by the Faculty Senate
8,991,295
The number of times that items in KU ScholarWorks have been downloaded
241
The number of works by undergraduate students in KU ScholarWorks
722
The number of dissertations and theses in the Pre-1923 Dissertations and Theses collection.
The first formal step taken by KU faculty toward an Open Access Policy was the Faculty Senate’s 2005 Resolution on Access to Scholarly Information, which established KU ScholarWorks and signaled faculty’s interest in and support for open access. In 2009 and 2010, Faculty Senate passed the KU Faculty Open Access Policy, asserting faculty rights to make their published scholarly articles openly accessible. KU is the first public institution to adopt an open access policy after Harvard, MIT, and Stanford’s School of Education. As of 2019, over 75 US universities, public and private, have adopted similar open access policies. As the Provost’ Designate under the policy, the Shulenburger Office supports faculty in a variety of ways to make their scholarly work as visible as possible.
To best leverage the Open Access Policy, faculty should affirm the license. Occasionally a publisher may require a faculty member to opt out of the Policy for a specific article, in which case the author may submit an Open Access Policy Waiver Form.
See Get Started for additional information.
