Open Access at KU

KU Faculty's Open Access Policy

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.

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 (pdf), 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 examples set by Harvard, MIT, and Stanford’s School of Education. As of 2022, nearly 100 US universities, public and private, have adopted similar open access policies, often with the support of the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI), which KU Libraries co-founded in 2011. As the Provost’ Designate under the policy, the Shulenburger Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright 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.