Legislative History: At its meeting of April 19, 2010, the Academic Senate approved the following Sense of the Senate Resolution presented by Senator Desalvo for the University Library Board.
Whereas: The university supports the Mission of the California State University, which includes advancing and extending knowledge, learning, and culture, especially throughout California, and
Whereas: The broad dissemination of knowledge benefits the scholarly community and the general public, and
Whereas: Economic and legal barriers continue to limit access to knowledge, and
Whereas: The principle of open access is actively being adopted by universities, professional organizations and federal agencies, and
Whereas: Emerging forms of scholarly work do not depend on traditional publishing formats, and
Whereas: The SJSU ScholarWorks institutional repository (ScholarWorks.sjsu.edu) serves as an infrastructure for disseminating and providing access to scholarly work, therefore be it
Resolved: that the San José State University Academic Senate support the principle of open access to scholarly work and research, and
Resolved: that the San José State University Academic Senate support new models for scholarly publishing that will promote open access and are consistent with standards for peer review and scholarly excellence, and
Resolved: that the San José State University Academic Senate encourage the university to promote the use of the institutional repository — and other new and existing infrastructures — for the dissemination of knowledge created at SJSU to the local, state and global community.
Resolved: that the Academic Senate of San José State University continues to affirm the rights of faculty to publish in the publications of their choice.
Resolved: that the Academic Senate encourage the university to promote the use of the institutional repository and to develop a formal organizational process that shall clearly indicate:
1) which academic unit (such as the Library) will manage acquisition and maintenance of open access material and issue communications regarding the use of the open access repository;
2) the scope of the term "faculty" in relation to the open access archive;
3) the procedure for notifying the faculty how to submit material into the repository;
4) the nature of the material to be included in the repository;
5) a procedure for identifying the costs of maintaining the repository and allocating funds to maintain the repository;
6) a unit outside of the repository unit (such as the Provost Office) responsible for monitoring the progress of the repository and for resolving conflicts or uncertainties regarding the operation of the repository.
Open access researcher Peter Suber (of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society) has identified two key principles for universities to support open access.[1]
1. Universities should provide open access (OA) to their research output.
2. Universities should not limit the freedom of the faculty to submit their work to the journals of their choice.
To investigate whether SJSU should adopt policies to support open access, in March 2008 the Sense of the Senate Resolution SS-S08-3 created a Task Force to Investigate Open Access. The task force met from November 2008 to March 2010, issuing its final report on March 8, 2010.
In that report, the task force proposed specific policy changes to encourage both approaches for open access to knowledge produced at SJSU. This includes direct dissemination of SJSU research and other relevant knowledge via SJSU ScholarWorks, and also removing barriers to faculty members publishing their own work in open access journals.
The University Library Board endorses this resolution, and asks that the Academic Senate vote upon it. The ULB believes that it is important that the SJSU faculty is on record as officially endorsing the principles of open access. It believes that such an endorsement is an important step for implementing open access at SJSU, both through changes to University policies, and also through decisions made at the college, department and individual level.
Approved: April
13,
2010
Discussed
at meeting on April 5, 2010.
Approved by email vote April 8, 2010.
Revisions approved by email
vote April 13,
2010.
Present: Kifer, Bakke, Kendall, Peterson, West, Smith, Desalvo, Ouverney,
Luo, A.
Kao
Absent:
Meldal,
J. Kao,
Curry
Vote:
13-0-0
Financial
impact: S.O.S. resolutions have no financial
impact
Workload impact: S.O.S. resolutions have no direct workload impact.
[1] Suber, Peter. (2008) SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #120. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-08.htm