The CWRU Faculty OA Policy works much like other typical OA policies by:
- Creating a legal mechanism under copyright law for faculty members to:
- Grant the university permission to disseminate faculty-authored scholarly articles openly, regardless of where faculty where choose to publish
- Reserve the rights of faculty to use and share their scholarly articles
- Providing rights only to the “author’s final manuscript” version of the article a.k.a. the author accepted manuscript (i.e., the manuscript that includes changes made as a result of the peer-review process, but prior to publisher’s copy-editing or formatting
- This is the same version as required by many funder policies
- The “version of record” (VoR) may also used if publisher copyrights permit
The CWRU's Faculty OA Policy DOES NOT:
- Dictate where faculty can publish
- Require faculty to deposit their scholarly articles in the repository
- Solve all problems in scholarly publishing
- Faculty open access policies, by design, are only one mechanism among many to facilitate more open and equitable access to scholarly research
- Compete with publisher nor put them out of business
- Publishers understand the scholarly marketplace enough to know that faculty open access policies are extremely common, and most cooperate with such policies.
- OA policy institutions respect publisher embargoes on sharing the work post-publication.
- Any publisher can request authors to obtain a waiver from the policy as a measure of self-protection. However, very few require this as a matter of policy.
- Automatically make all faculty scholarship immediately open access
- CWRU faculty still decide whether to deposit in Scholarly Commons, the university's institutional repository
- Relate to publication in open access journals or faculty sharing their work on other open access websites, e.g. SSRN, arXiv, PubMed
The CWRU Faculty OA Policy is Determined and Approved by Faculty:
- Consistent with the Faculty Handbook and the university’s policies on academic freedom, faculty continue to be free to publish in the venues of their choosing
- The policy is "journal-agnostic" -- it does not require publication in an open access journal, nor does the policy relate to any article publication charges, subsidies, or open access publication fees an author may encounter from a journal or publisher
- The policy retains rights for the faculty and the university to share their scholarly articles openly, regardless of where faculty choose to publish their work
- Individual faculty can (but are not required) to submit articles to Scholarly Commons, the university's institutional repository
- CWRU Faculty Senate approved the policy on March 25, 2024 and will review the policy after five years
Forms of scholarship covered by the Faculty OA Policy:
- “Scholarly articles” – i.e., research results published to advance inquiry and knowledge, without expectation of payment; typically presented in peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings
- “Author’s final manuscript” – the final version of the author’s article incorporating any changes made as a result of the peer-review process, but prior to publisher’s copy-editing or formatting (a.k.a. author accepted manuscript)
- “Version of Record” (i.e. final published version) *only if publisher copyright permits*
NOT covered: books or other royalty-generating work, popular articles, fiction and poetry, encyclopedia entries, ephemeral writings, lecture notes, lecture videos, other copyrighted works, or other IP covered by university policies
