When faculty publish their work in scholarly journals, they are asked to sign away their copyright to the journal publisher. This loss of copyright means that faculty cannot post their article on their own web site, or make it electronically available through any other electronic archive. Many scholarly societies and research universities have come to see this restriction on the free exchange of ideas as a crisis, and have developed recommendations and procedures advocating that faculty negotiate to retain their copyright privileges. 

In an effort to encourage more open access to scholarly works, the library has a small fund available to cover the costs of open access fees.  See information below.

Author Addendum
SPARC has prepared an Author Addendum (pdf), a document which authors of articles can use to try to retain rights at the time of submission to publishers.  An online version can generate a complete form with information on the specific publication.

For more information, see the SPARC web site for Resources for Authors and the following resources:

• SHERPA/RoMEO
  Use to find information on permissions normally given as part of a publisher's copyright transfer agreement. Search by journal title, publisher, etc.
  
  
• DOAJ: The Directory of Open Access Journals
  Look up journals by title or by subject discipline or search for articles.
  
  
• "Copyrights and the paradox of academic publishing"
  By R. Michael Tanner, Provost University of Illinois, Chicago
  
  
• Science Commons Scholar's Copyright Project
  Science Commons is part of the Creative Commons project. The Scholar's Copyright project launched in June 2006.
  
  
• Author Addenda: An Examination of Five Alternatives
  Peter Hirtle. D-Lib. vol.12, no.11 (2006)
  
  
• The Case for Scholar's Management of Author Rights.
  Carol Ann Hughes. portal: Libraries and the Academy, vol 6. no.2 (2006), pp.123-126.
  
  
• High Costs of Scholarly Journals [via Ebscohost]
  CHANGE, Nov/Dec 2003, p. 10-1 - This article by Richard Edwards and David Shulenburger outlines some key issues regarding the reasons scholarly journal prices have increased at an exceptionally high rata as well as providing some interesting thoughtful suggestions for "what do do about it".

Open-Access Fund for Faculty Articles

The library has set aside a limited amount of money to cover costs associated with publishing an article in an open-access journal or in a journal that provides an open access option for a fee. Our goal is to create increased access to articles produced by our faculty.  OA allows us to deposit copies of these articles in Selected Works, linking them to our individual faculty research pages, and with an addition link to them through the DigitalCommons. Articles deposited in the Selected Works are discoverable via Google Scholar. In order to explore this funding option, we must negotiate prior to signing your copyright form with the publisher. If faculty are interested in exploring this option, please contact your department library liaison, or Terri Fishel. We will first check Sherpa/Romeo to confirm what the publisher policy is on self-archiving pre- or post-print articles. In some cases, this option may be sufficient for providing access to faculty published works. A stipulation of using the Open-Access Fund is that the article must be accessible via your Selected Works page and in the DigitalCommons.