Strategies for Success: Open Access Policies at North American Educational Institutions by Christine Fruin, Shan Sutton. College & Research Libraries, vol 77, no 4, 2016.

"The majority of the institutions with enacted policies reported a collaborative, collegial, and otherwise positive relationship between faculty and administration."

Most policies (86 percent in the Enacted Policy Group and 67 percent in the In Process Group) include language that grants automatic waivers to a faculty author on request without justification or explanation. In the majority of policies at institutions surveyed, the waiver is granted on a per-article basis, rather than a blanket waiver for all of a faculty member’s articles. In some cases, the waiver applies to both the nonexclusive license and the requirement to deposit into the institutional repository, while in others it applies to the license only and faculty members are still expected to deposit all of their article manuscripts."

Most policies (86 percent in the Enacted Policy Group and 67 percent in the In Process Group) include language that grants automatic waivers to a faculty author on request without justification or explanation. In the majority of policies at institutions surveyed, the waiver is granted on a per-article basis, rather than a blanket waiver for all of a faculty member’s articles. In some cases, the waiver applies to both the nonexclusive license and the requirement to deposit into the institutional repository, while in others it applies to the license only and faculty members are still expected to deposit all of their article manuscripts."

"Partnerships between academic libraries and faculty outside the library were also identified as a critical component of promoting the institutional policies across campus in advance of faculty votes. In all three respondent groups, the most common approach articulated by respondents was to assign responsibility for managing the promotion process to either the faculty senate library committee or a committee specifically formed to promote the policy. In some cases, the Provost’s office or the Office of Research was directly involved in policy promotion."

Reasons offered to faculty on why open access is important:

• Open access enables authors to retain more of their rights in their own work rather than assigning all rights to the publishers.

• Open access is a means of addressing the pricing crisis in subscription scholarly journals and combating the monopoly that a few publishers have on the dissemination of scholarship.

• Open access promotes access to research by anyone. It allows more people to benefit from scholarship, including the general public who may have an interest in or need for scholarly research.

• Open access allows faculty to not only be better researchers but also better educators. When professors can’t access the most recent research, they are deprived of the opportunity to bring that material into the classroom. With science advancing at an ever-increasing pace, it’s crucial that professors have access to cutting-edge research, so students’ education is not outdated before they even finish a course.

• Open access facilitates collaboration on new research. With access barriers removed, scientists and other researchers can share scholarship across borders and work together more efficiently to bring forth new ideas.

• Open access supports public access. A large body of scholarship is funded through public tax dollars, and the public should be allowed free and unburdened access to the research they help support.

• Scholarly research can be made open access through deposit in open access repositories 
  (green OA) or through publication in open access journals (gold OA). Publication of scholarly research in gold OA journals does not signify that the research is of lesser quality. Gold OA scholarly literature is not lesser quality than traditionally published scholarship. Much of the open access literature published via gold OA is subject to the same or more rigorous peer review as traditional toll access journals.

• Open access supports the institution’s land grant mission.

• Open access supports the institution’s education and/or research mission.

• Open access enables access to research by scholars at institutions that cannot afford access to the subscription-based journals in which the articles are published, especially those in non-Western countries.

• Open access to research outputs is becoming a standard requirement at many funding agencies.

Methods of promoting policy:

    Websites, including LibGuides
    Brochures
    In-person meetings with faculty, including open forums, brown bag sessions, and departmental visits
    Targeted e-mails
    Articles in library and other campus newsletters
    Open Access Week programming on campus

Faculty Concerns about open access:

• Complying with the policy will create a burden on faculty

• Concern that control of copyright being transferred to institution and that deposit in IR permits unauthorized use of works by others

• Belief that publishers will refuse work if author subject to an open access policy

• Belief that a mandatory policy is an act of institutional control or coercion

• Confusion about what types of works the policy applies to

• Belief that open access will hurt scholarly societies

• Belief that policy requires publication in open access journals

• Belief that open access infringes upon academic freedom

• Confusion of place of publication vs. requirement of deposit in the IR

• Requirement of multiple deposits where funder policy also requires deposit of work in an open access repository.

Responses to faculty concerns:

• No requirement to publish in an open access journal; article may be published in any scholarly journal

• Outline many benefits of depositing works in an institution repository

• Deposit assistance available

• Clarification that the final version of the peer reviewed manuscript, not the published version, should be deposited

• Copyright ownership is not transferred to the institution; rather, authors retain copyright and grant the institution a nonexclusive license

• Clarification that the policy only applies to scholarly articles published after policy’s effective date

• Waiver available if publisher refuses to publish on account of policy

• Waivers are available without proof or justification of need

• Faculty members may elect an embargo upon availability of their deposited works

• If work has been deposited in a funder mandated repository, it will be harvested by institution

• Library will track publication of articles and request manuscripts from faculty for deposit

• Faculty members have responsibility to deposit their works

Adopting and Implementing an Open Access Policy: The Library's Role. Brian Kern. The Serials Librarian 66 (2014): 1-4, p 196-203.

Alleghany College's Pelletier Library had a strong commitment to open source software, and an IR, and was just beginning to commit to promoting open access, when the College's Academic Support Committee noticed the issue. The committee learned that the college's guidelines for research funding didn't include paying open access fees and that many faculty had been paying them out of pocket. That Committee developed..."a rights retention policy with a permission mandate, a policy that assumes that fac­ulty authors will retain full rights to their work, and mandates that the authors give the library a copy, along with permission to host the work on the IR and the non-exclusive right to make the work openly available."  The policy only applied to peer reviewed articles written or contracted to be published since the date of the adoption of the policy. Before the faculty vote on the policy, the library's director held meet­ings with faculty and used the library's newsletter to explain and promote OA, arguing for OA as a way to change publishing models, reduce journal inflation, help the library, and increase public access to schol­arly content " However, it was primarily the Academic Support Committee that convinced faculty by arguing that the policy empowered faculty to protect their rights. The Provost signaled his support of the policy by matching the fundd the library planned to set aside for an open access fund to pay publisher's open access fees. Faculty are encouraged to negotiate an addendum to their contract to publish if the publisher requires an embargo. Implementation of the policy consists of a website and the IR. There is a waiver form form and a waiver is automatically granted regardless of the reason, and also a form to request payment of open access fees, and a form and program to generate a contract waivers eliminating embargos and other restrictions. If the author has a waiver or doesn't wish to participate, their works are still placed in the IR but access is closed.

Engaged Citizenship through Campus-Level Democratic Processes: A Librarian and Graduate Student Collaboration on Open Access Policy Adoption by Melissa Cantrell and Andrew Johnson, Journal of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication, 2018 Special Issue, Vol 6, p 1-17. 

Abstract: 

INTRODUCTION While faculty votes to establish open access (OA) policies leverage one particular campus level democratic mechanism in the name of advancing scholarly communication, other processes, including student government actions, can also play significant roles in OA policy adoption and related efforts. As early career researchers, graduate students are particularly well-poised to engage with campus-level democratic institutions in order to bring about change in scholarly communication.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM This case study details a multi-year collaboration between librarians and graduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder aimed at the development and adoption of a campus OA policy. Librarians and graduate students worked together to plan for and sustain momentum throughout the process of building formal support for the policy through student government and faculty assembly resolutions, drafting policy language, and shepherding the proposed policy through numerous meetings and committees all the way up to and including its formal adoption. This  collaboration through engaged citizenship at the campus level also led to a number of unintended benefits to both librarians and graduate students involved.

NEXT STEPS AND CONCLUSIONS Ultimately, the CU Boulder collaboration between librarians and graduate students led to significant scholarly communication achievements largely through the utilization of campus-level democratic processes. The case study concludes with a look at next steps for implementing the OA policy across campus as well as a discussion of the labor involved in such efforts, including implications for graduate student involvement in scholarly communication initiatives.

Graduate students have a strong interest in greater and more equitable access to info. Institutions where graduate students in conjunction with libraries have been involved  in influencing an open access policy through democratic processes include the University of Washington, MIT, the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and the University of Colorado Boulder. "In each example, however, democratic methods and venues were used in order to strengthen or bring fort