Subscribe to our newsletter by emailUCI Adopts Open Access Policy
Beginning November 1, UCI faculty will begin depositing their published research articles to eScholarship, UC’s open access repository for faculty, staff and students. Articles will be available to the public without charge via eScholarship in tandem with their publication in scholarly journals.
The UCI Libraries will take steps to notify many publishers about the policy and the license granted therein to UCI to make articles openly accessible. If publishers or faculty object to the terms of the policy, faculty can obtain a waiver to opt out of the policy or obtain an embargo to delay public access to the article for as long as the publisher requests. The policy says nothing about what journals faculty should publish in; faculty continue to make that determination for themselves. The policy seeks to raise awareness that there are other options for publication, including open access journals which will increase discovery and benefit the public and the future of research.
The UC Open Access Policy is in line with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directive requiring “each Federal Agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to results of the research funded by the Federal Government.”
The adoption of the UC Open Access policy across all ten UC campuses signals to scholarly publishers that open access, in terms defined by faculty and not by publishers, must be part of any future scholarly publishing system. The faculty remains committed to working with publishers to transform the publishing landscape in ways that are sustainable and beneficial to both the University and the public.
For further information, please Mitchell Brown, the Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Coordinator, at mcbrown@uci.edu or 824.9732.