Open Access at the University of Oregon

Open Access logo "Open Access" is generally defined as web-based publication where the material is free for all users to read and use. In academic scholarship, peer reviewed open access publishing is rapidly growing in popularity as an alternative or supplement to traditional venues for scholarship. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists more than 4000 scholarly open access publications, where the content is quality controlled (usually via anonymous peer review) and represents "scholarship" of the sort that might be considered for tenure and promotion. Many additional journals offer open access for subsets of their articles or limited open access (for example, after an embargo period). Many libraries and researchers provide supplemental open access to peer reviewed publications through deposit of copies of their work in an institutional repository or web site, perhaps after an embargo period.

Open Access is alive and well at UO. This page lists some of the activities of UO people in support of open access publishing.

UO Authors

Many UO authors publish in open access journals or make their work available on Scholars' Bank, the UO's institutional repository. Many deposit preprints of their work in other discipline-specific open access repositories such as arXiv and REpeC, as well.

UO Open Access journals

Several departments at the University of Oregon sponsor Open Access journals. The following list is incomplete. If you know of additional scholarly OA journals that are either sponsored by a UO department, hosted on UO servers, or edited by a UO faculty member, please let us know:

Journal name	UO affiliation	Status
Chapman Journal (title varies)	Published and hosted by the Clark Honors College	open access anonymously reviewed student-edited ejournal
CultureWork	Published by the UO Department of Arts & Administration Editor: Julie Voelker-Morris; Robert Voelker-Morris (UO)	open access electronic magazine
Ecotone: Journal of Environmental Studies	Published by the UO Environmental Studies Program	open access student-edited ejournal
Etude: New Voices in Literary Nonfiction	Published and hosted by the Literary Nonfiction program at the UO School of Journalism and Communication Editors: Lauren Kessler et al. (UO, Journalism & Communication)	open access quality controlled literary magazine
InterNationality	Published by the Oregon Consortium for International and Area Studies. Editors: Carlos Aguirre, Dennis Galvan. managing Editor: Clayton J. Cleveland	open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation	Published and hosted by the UO School of Law	subscription + open access quality controlled scholarly student-edited journal
Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media	Co-editor: Julia Lesage (UO, English) "Jump Cut ... is not affiliated with or supported by any institution."	open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Konturen	Published and hosted by the UO Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures Editor: Jeffrey S. Librett (UO, German)	open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Oregon Law Review	Published and hosted by the UO Law School	subscription + open access quality controlled student-edited scholarly journal
Oregon Quarterly	Published by the UO Office of Communications Editor: Guy Maynard, UO	subscription + open access general-interest magazine
Oregon Review of International Law	Published and hosted by the UO Law School	not open access

Funds supporting UO authors

Although many open access journals are free both to readers and to authors, others operate with an "author pays" business model. In such cases, author fees can be a significant impediment to open access publication. The UO is developing initiatives to assist UO authors with page charges, and to provide other support that reduces the barriers to open access publication.

Starting Spring term 2009, the UO Libraries is experimenting with a grant program, the "Open Access Publishing Support Fund," to pay author fees in open access publications.

Institutional Commitments to Open Access Publishing

The UO has a history of formal commitments to open access publishing.

Two UO Senate resolutions encourage UO authors to use authors' addenda when publishing. Such addenda clarify copyright transfer agreements, and reserve sufficient rights to the author to allow him or her to distribute the author's own work after publication through means such as Scholars' Bank. Resolution US 0708-17 was passed at the Senate Meeting on February 13, 2008. The Senate then revisited the issue, and as followup, on May 28, 2008 the senate also passed US 0708-20, which "strongly" recommended the use of an author's addendum.

In addition, two UO departments, the UO Libraries and Romance Languages, have resolved to mandate deposit of all scholarly journal articles from their departments into Scholars' Bank.

text of the Romance Languages faculty resolution.
text of the UO Libraries faculty resolution. library policy:

Additional Information

Open Access News

Readers interested in following developments in Open Access may also want to track Peter Suber's Open Access News blog, http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/atom.xml

Open Access Directory

Simmons College maintains a popular wiki with information about open access, the Open Access Directory. Examples of information maintained there include:

Another very useful resource is the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS).

Maintained by: JQ Johnson, jqj@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 10/13/2009