Free Access to Academic Info Promoted

Many faculty have websites with access to recent papers they have written available for free – some published; some in working paper stage. The impression of yours truly is that journals seldom object, even if they hold copyrights and normally charge for access. Book publishers can be more resistant to free access, however, when it comes to chapters in books. In any case, as per below, there is a move in academe toward wider, free access.

Princeton U. Adopts Open-Access Policy (except)

September 29, 2011, Chronicle of Higher Ed (Wired Campus blog), Jennifer Howard

The movement to make research freely available got a high-profile boost this week with the news that Princeton University’s faculty has unanimously adopted an open-access policy. “The principle of open access is consistent with the fundamental purposes of scholarship,” said the faculty advisory committee that proposed the resolution. The decision puts the university in line with Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a growing number of other institutions with policies that encourage or require researchers to post open copies of their articles, usually in an institutional repository. Unpublished drafts, books, lecture notes, etc., are not included in the Princeton policy, which gives the university a “nonexclusive right” to make copies of its faculty’s scholarly journal articles publicly available.

…The new mandate permits professors to post copies of articles online in “not-for-a-fee venues,” including personal and university Web sites. The faculty advisory committee that recommended the policy said that it will keep faculty members “from giving away all their rights when they publish in a journal.”

…Career pressure on junior scholars as well as differences in publishing practices among disciplines”mean that some faculty are not in fact going to be in a position to comply with the new policy without asking for a waiver,” Ms. Trainer said. “And we know that.” She added that even faculty members likely to ask for waivers “understood that it was in the overall university’s best interests to have such a policy in place…

Full article at http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/princeton-u-adopts-open-access-policy/33450

Meanwhile, keep your website open so we can know what you are doing:

And there is so much to know! http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2011