Library Communications

Romance Languages, UO Libraries Enact Open Access Publishing Policies

July 7, 2009

Faculty members in the UO’s Department of Romance Languages and the UO Libraries have voted to adopt an open access mandate, which directs all faculty in those units to archive open access versions of published research in the UO's institutional repository Scholars' Bank.

The policy makes scholarship from these units available, free of charge, to anyone with an Internet connection, including high school students and teachers, university researchers and students in the developing world, and the general public.

Similar mandates have been adopted by other major universities or units within them, including MIT (university-wide), Harvard (Faculty of Arts and Sciences, School of Government), and Stanford (School of Education), as well as several other universities in Europe and Asia.

The UO’s Department of Romance Languages is the first humanities department worldwide to adopt an open access mandate. Open access policies have typically been more commonly adopted in university science departments.

For more information on open access issues and opportunities for UO faculty members to receive financial support for publishing in open access journals, visit the library’s Scholarly Communications web page on the topic at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/scis/sc/oaps.html, or contact JQ Johnson, director of scholarly communications, at jqj@uoregon.edu, 346-1746.

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