Going Open: Proposals for PSU

The policy reserves rights for PSU faculty to make their articles freely available to the public in an open access repository.  It does this by automatically granting a non-exclusive copyright license to the University prior to any later agreements authors may make with publishers. PSU retains those rights regardless of what rights authors may subsequently transfer to publishers. The policy doesn’t say where PSU authors should publish or require them to pay open access fees to publishers in order to comply.

By approving the policy, PSU faculty also agree to provide the library with a copy of the author accepted manuscript to be included in PSU’s institutional repository.  Any faculty member can opt out of granting the license to the institution, although we ask that you still share a copy of the author accepted manuscript with the library so that it can be made available if and when your publishing agreement allows.

The policy increases the dissemination and impact of the scholarly work done by PSU faculty while enabling faculty to exercise rights in their own article far beyond what is generally allowed by publisher contracts.  Additionally, making articles available on an open access basis has been show to increase citations to those articles.

No.  Faculty have been voting to implement these types of policies since 2008.  Today this type of policy is in effect at more than 50 institutions, and in many of those instances it was voted in unanimously.  See the list of institutions that have implemented this type of policy, and where it was voted in unanimously.

The policy applies to scholarly articles which, in the language of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, are the primary works that scholars publish “for the sake of inquiry and knowledge” and “give to the world without expectation of payment.”  Scholarly articles are typically presented in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and conference proceedings.  Clearly falling outside of the scope of the policy are a wide variety of other scholarly writings such as writings intended to generate royalties, books, commissioned articles, popular writings, fiction, poetry, and course materials.

No.  The policy would apply to any scholarly articles for which a publication agreement was signed after the adoption of the policy.  It would not apply to articles for which a publication agreement was signed before the adoption of the policy, nor would it apply to articles written after a faculty member has left PSU. 

The policy applies to all voting faculty members (i.e. faculty who have the right to vote in faculty meetings and faculty elections,) including tenure-track, clinical, research, teaching, and contract faculty.  It does not apply to special appointment faculty, (emeritus, retired, affiliate, and visiting faculty.)  It does not apply to staff, undergraduate or graduate students.

The author accepted manuscript refers to the version of the article that includes all of the author’s edits made as a result of the peer review process, but does not include the publishers formatting or any edits made unilaterally by the publisher after the author’s final submission.

Anyone for any reason.  An author will receive a waiver (currently in draft form) for any article they wish, no questions asked.  The library anticipates setting up a web form to generate waivers for anyone who wishes to have one.  Please notice that the waiver contains language that it cannot be revoked by the institution. 

Under US copyright law, any joint author can give nonexclusive permission to copy and distribute the work.  (Joint authors are those who participate in the preparation of the article with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of the whole.)  Best practices would include treating open access policy participation like other co-authorship issues – determining author order, reporting contributions, etc. – and, hence, discussing the issue among co-authors as part of the writing and publication process.  If a co-author objects to the license, and cannot be convinced it is beneficial, then remember that you can obtain a waiver for the article.

There is no empirical evidence that even when all articles are freely available, journals are canceled.  Journals will still be needed for their value-added services, such as peer review logistics, copy editing, type setting, and maintaining web sites.  The publisher’s final version continues to be the version of record and the library is committed to following best practices which dictate that whenever the author accepted manuscript is posted in the institutional repository, a citation and link to the version of record will be included. 

The major societies in physics have not seen any impact on their publishing programs despite the fact that for many years an open access repository (arXiv) has been making available nearly all of the High Energy Physics literature written during that period. If there is downward pressure on journal prices over time, publishers with the most inflated prices – which tend to be the commercial publishers, not scholarly societies – will feel the effects sooner.

No. The publisher charges those fees to fund open access publication of your article at the journal’s website, but there are two ways to make scholarship open: through publisher-hosted OA (which sometimes involves fees) and through self-archiving by an author. PSU’s proposed policy uses the latter route, by reserving rights for authors to include the author’s version of their articles in an open access repository. There is no fee associated with this self-archiving function. Authors may choose to pursue paid, publisher-hosted OA for their own reasons, but that is not required or suggested by the PSU OA policy.

In order to avoid misunderstandings with the publisher, you should let the publisher know about the policy and what rights you have already granted to the PSU.  This can be done in a variety of ways, but the easiest is to attach an addendum to your publishing contract, (PSU addendum is still under development, see Harvard sample example).

If a publisher objects to the addendum, you may

• Obtain a waiver of the license and let the publisher know that you have done so; or
• Obtain an embargo to delay open availability of the article in the institutional repository and let the publisher know you have done so; or
• Work to persuade the publisher that it should accept PSU’s nonexclusive license in order to be able to publish your article.

The author accepted manuscript will be made immediately publicly available in PSU’s institutional repository, where it will be accompanied by a full citation and link to the version of record on the publisher’s website. 

In cases where an author obtains a waiver for their article, the library will do what is called a “dark deposit,” meaning that only citation information will be made publicly available, and the article itself will not be available until allowed by the publisher’s agreement.  Many publisher agreements allow the author accepted manuscript to be made available in institutional repositories after an embargo period of 12-24 months.

PSU may further allow others to distribute the content, provided that the articles are not sold for profit. For instance, faculty at other institutions could be given permission to make copies for free distribution directly to their students. However, PSU does not have– and cannot grant to others –the right to sell the articles for a profit or to sell a book containing the articles for a profit.

No.  The policy excludes the institution from engaging in any for profit activities with the article, and also excludes the institution from granting rights pertaining to commercial gain to others.

No.  The policy grants the institution a nonexclusive license. Unlike the exclusive licenses usually granted to publishers when an author signs a publishing agreement, a nonexclusive license does not transfer copyrights away from the author.  The PSU Intellectual Property policy, as enshrined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, recognizes faculty as the copyright holders in their scholarly work.  The proposed open access policy affirms this policy and also helps authors continue to exercise rights in their work even if they choose to sign publisher agreements.

This policy would grant PSU the right to license others to distribute the work, so long as the work was not sold for a profit. For example, PSU could give permission for an article to be used in a course pack (including giving such permission to you if you have otherwise transferred copyright), so long as the course pack was not sold for profit. No one would be able to sell your articles for profit without getting permission from the appropriate rights holder, whether that were you or a publisher to whom you have assigned such rights.

Yes. PSU may permit you and others to make derivative works based on the articles that fall under the policy. However, PSU would only exercise this right with permission from the author.

Most people find their way to articles in repositories via general internet searches or using tools like Google Scholar. PSU’s institutional repository contains information about each item in a standardized way that is easily crawled and understood by search engines. This increases the likelihood the articles will not only be found by searches, but will also turn up higher in search results. Additionally, readers are directed to articles in repositories through open access services such as Unpaywall.

Plymouth State University Open Access Policy FAQs contains elements from the Open Access Policy FAQs of the MIT Libraries (used under CC BY-NC 2.0), the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication (CC BY 4.0), and Harvard Library (CC BY 4.0). For more information about our policy proposal, contact Christin Wixson or Robin DeRosa.