Open Access – Amherst College
Introduction
Amherst College Libraries has an Open Access Resolution whereby the college community, primarily faculty and students, are served. This resolution for Open Access was adopted by the college in 2013, was amended in both 2015 and 2016, and highlights the guidelines, instructions for submission of an article, and frequently asked questions.
The resolution is concise and provides general guiding principles directed at faculty. The main points include 1) that faculty members will allow the college to make accessible their article and to employ copyright in those articles, 2) that this resolution applies to all articles authored and co-authored by faculty minus those articles finished before the implementation of this resolution, and 3) that each faculty member supply the college with a digital final version (Open Access Resolution, n.d). The Frequently Asked Question section that is hyperlinked within the resolution offers additional information for faculty including, but not limited to, submitting their work, addendums, their drafts, removal of their article, and information about Open Access (Open Access FAQ, n.d).
Strengths & Places for Improvement
The resolution is helpful in that it discloses that the college is Open Access and working toward incorporating this more in their community. The instructional page about submitting an article and the FAQ is also invaluable as navigating Open Access can be intricate and tedious. As such, these are strengths that the resolution has. Other successes include that the college requires faculty to participate. One can opt out; however, the default is that faculty need to submit. According to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), it is recommended that institutions require scholars to deposit into their repositories because it ensures better results in Open Access at the institution (Campus Open-Access Policy, n.d); and an added benefit is that it preserves an archival copy (Kelty, p. 13). Furthermore, the resolution asks for ‘scholarly articles’ which is intentionally vague—this leaves it up to the author depending on what discipline they research in (Open Access Expert Forum, 2014, p 3). This is a strength in the document as having explicit language, could be exclusionary (Kelty, p.12). While these are a select few strengths, there are areas for improvement.
An area for improvement is to update the resolution into a tangible policy that can directly address concerns, questions, and details of their open access procedures. Their resolution was last updated in 2016. Scholarly communication has evolved a great deal since then and completely revamping this into a policy would be enormously beneficial for the college community. And, the number of FAQs could be reduced as they could be incorporated directly into the policy. Finally, it would be helpful to add a person of contact for specific inquiries.
Another area for improvement is to indicate who all is included in the faculty that must submit their articles. For instance, are junior faculty required to submit their articles? What about work that is co-authored with students or non-faculty scholars? Specifying this information could impact the number of article submissions received.
The following section offers a proposed plan for an Open Access Policy that provides suggestions regarding implementation, risks, and benefits as well as suggestions for evaluation schedules.
Proposed Plan
Open Access Policy
Currently, Amherst College has a two-member committee for Scholarly Communication committee; and other members could be added as needed (Open Access Instructions for Faculty, n.d). A suggestion would be to put together a larger committee to draft an Open Access Policy derived from their Open Access Resolution. With multiple members, drafting could be distributed equitably to tackle all the issues necessary.
Since the Scholarly Communication Committee would be drafting a policy from the prior resolution, a lot of the information could be transferred over. However, when drafting the document, a suggestion would be for the committee to add in a clear purpose along with goals to explain the overall objectives of Open Access for Amherst College. Following, they could add an explanation indicating what work will accept. Leaving their accepted materials as ‘scholarly articles’ would be completely satisfactory.
The policy would need to incorporate copy right information. The original resolution and the questions in the FAQ section offer insight about this topic. They could weave some of those answers into the policy itself. Furthermore, the Scholarly Communication Committee would need to disclose that they work directly with the Dean of the Faculty’s Office for questions about implementation and interpretation of the policy as a matter of transparency. Contact information for questions about the policy, procedures, and overall specific questions should be provided to demonstrate that this is a policy that is both a working and living document that will be evaluated regularly. Along with this, it would be helpful to provide dates indicating when the resolution was adopted, when the policy was drafted and hopefully approved, and when it will be next up for evaluation.
Implementation
Once a committee has been put together and a draft of the policy has been prepared, evaluated, and approved, implementation of the policy would follow. Rather than immediately begin with executing the policy, a suggestion would be to send out college wide communications offering information sessions about open access, the policy, and the impact on scholarly communication. Sessions could look like workshops or roundtables to provide as much information as possible. Data should be collected at these sessions to be able to further evaluate.
Budget
Budgets for Open Access implementation would need to be discussed in the early stages of committee creation and policy drafting as allocation of funds would depend on library wide considerations that may vary from year to year.
Risks & Benefits
There are various risks involved with the creation of a committee, drafting of a policy, editing, approving, and executing said policy. A few risks include the time required in finding members to join the Scholarly Communication Committee. There is also time required to draft, review, edit and implement policy. Holding information sessions is also just as time consuming. All this will require funds and a budget and given how many academic institutions have been severely impacted by the current global pandemic, budgets are tight. Due to this, strategic budgetary planning will be required.
Regardless of the significant risks, the benefits of having and implementing a strong Open Access Policy will be helpful for the college, especially for faculty who research and produce work. One of the largest aspects of Open Access is it allows academic institutions to make their work “openly and freely available online and in perpetuity” (Kelty, p.3); it also is “compatible with copyright, peer review, revenue (even profit), print, preservation, prestige, quality, career-advancement, indexing, and other features and supportive services associated with conventional scholarly literature” (Suber, 2015). Open access is the new direction of scholarly communication.
Evaluation
Evaluation of the Open Access Policy would need to be measured first after two years and then it can take place every 2-5 years as deemed appropriate and necessary by the Scholarly Communications Committee. To accomplish this, a suggestion would be for the committee to meet twice a year to assess the current strengths and areas for improvement. During these meetings, data regarding all scholarly articles submitted as well as the budget would need to be discussed.
Conclusion
The proposed suggestions above for an Open Access policy for Amherst College are neither exhaustive nor the only way to improve upon the work they have done. Rather it is just one way among various options. The objective here was to offer one possible solution.
References
Campus Open-Access Policy “Choice Points”. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2021_fall/inls700_001/Readings/SPARC-OpenAccessGuidelines.pdf.
Committees & Groups. Committees & Groups | Staff | Amherst College. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://www.amherst.edu/library/about/staff/committees.
Kelty, C. (n.d.). Open Access at the University of California. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2021_fall/inls700_001/Readings/Kelty2014-OpenAccessUnivCalifornia.pdf.
Open Access Expert Forum. (2014). Chapel Hill. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2021_fall/inls700_001/Readings/UNCApril2014-OpenAccessExpertForumMinutes.pdf.
Open Access FAQ. Open access FAQ | Services for Faculty & Staff | Amherst College. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://www.amherst.edu/library/services/facstaff/openaccessfaq.
Open Access Instructions for Faculty. Open access instructions for faculty | Services for Faculty & Staff | Amherst College. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://www.amherst.edu/library/services/facstaff/openaccessinstructions.
Open Access Resolution. Open Access Resolution | Services for Faculty & Staff | Amherst College. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://www.amherst.edu/library/services/facstaff/openaccessresolution.
Suber, P. (2015, December 5). Open Access Overview. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from http://bit.ly/oa-overview.