University of Virginia
AC-11: Access to Research

The voluntary Open Access policy was a revision of a resolution on scholarly publications that was brought to the Faculty Senate in November 2009. Originally, the resolution said participation would be mandatory by default, but that faculty members could sign a waiver to opt out of it. The policy then was revised so that faculty members simply could decide if they wanted to contribute to the repository. It is a voluntary open access policy that was adopted on February 5, 2010 and the university library uses Libra as its repository.

Revised Resolution on Open Access and Scholarship Prepared by the Senate Task Force on Scholarly Publications and Authors’ Rights 2/5/2010 WHEREAS: According to the constitution and by-laws of the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia: “The Faculty Senate represents all faculties of the University with respect to all academic functions such as the establishment and termination of degree programs, major modifications of requirements for existing degrees, and action affecting all faculties, or more than one faculty, of the University;” and WHEREAS: In the interest of preserving its historical commitment to producing and disseminating knowledge in the public interest, the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia is dedicated to making the research and scholarship of the faculty of the University of Virginia as widely available as possible. NOW THEREFORE the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia hereby adopts and endorses the following policy relating to copyrights in scholarly articles authored by the faculty and encourages the development of an open access program for the University as provided below: Each Faculty member at the University of Virginia is encouraged to reserve a nonexclusive, irrevocable, non-commercial, global license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of her or his scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same. To enable public access to and preservation of scholarly articles, each faculty member is encouraged to provide an electronic version of the article as to which the necessary rights have been retained, to the University Library for deposit in a repository at such time as the Library might make such services available to faculty. The University Library’s continued development of a digital repository for the University is strongly endorsed. The University Library is encouraged to enable deposit of faculty works for which sufficient rights have been retained in the repository and to continue to offer information services relating to author’s rights and copyright to University faculty in support of open access. The Senate shall continue the existence of the Task Force on Scholarly Publications and Authors’ Rights to monitor developments in scholarly licensing practices and copyright law, to work with the Library and faculty to develop a useful and easily managed scholarly repository for faculty scholarship, and to report to the Senate each year on the progress of this Resolution. The Task Force shall continue until such time as, in the judgment of the Executive Council of the Faculty Senate, the continuation of the Task Force is no longer useful

The Library provides Libra, UVA’s institutional repository. Libra offers a secure place for the UVA community to deposit digital scholarship and make it freely available. For more background on Libra, see the Faculty Senate Open Access Resolution of February 5, 2010. Through its Open Access Fund, the Library subsidizes members of the UVA community who want to publish in open access journals that charge publication fees.