Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of learning materials, research, and creative work (hereafter called “scholarship”) coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment (SPARC). University of Iowa Libraries is dedicated to supporting Open Access and collaborating with institutional partners and scholars in disseminating scholarship as widely and with as few restrictions to use as possible, while recognizing the rights of creators. Our support is rooted in the Libraries’ Strategic Plan and demonstrated by the following commitments:
- Increase the visibility and impact of University of Iowa scholarship on a state, national and global scale
- Contribute to the University’s global efforts to improve the human condition and to support scholarship worldwide
- Provide tools for dissemination of University of Iowa scholarship
- Facilitate equitable access to scholarly materials for the betterment of society, regardless of location, affiliation, or status
- Create opportunities for innovative scholarship through sharing and reuse of scholarly outputs
- Make publicly funded scholarship available to communities beyond the Academy
- Support fiscally responsible models of access to research
At UI Libraries, we strive to leverage our position as a leading research institution to contribute to and shape the future of open access. We do so while anticipating the needs of our local community and partnering with UI researchers to advance open access.
Accordingly, we provide:
- Individual support—Subject Specialist/Departmental Liaison Librarians can help scholars navigate issues of copyright, author rights, fair use, agency funding requirements regarding open or public access, and selecting Open Access journals or disciplinary pre-print repositories. Contact your subject specialist to find out more.
- Education and outreach—UI Libraries’ Scholarly Impact Department provides individual and group instruction on improving visibility of scholarship through open access research outputs, including open data, open journal publishing, and OA repositories. The department helps campus constituents understand new developments in OA publishing and open science. Contact Scholarly Impact at lib-impact@uiowa.edu.
- Self-archiving and publishing support—UI scholars can make their work open access through UI repositories. UI Libraries hosts university archival material, theses and dissertations, journal articles, Open Educational Resources (OER), conference proceedings, books, data, multimedia projects, and locally edited journals. In addition, the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio collaborates with faculty and students on the design and implementation of digital scholarly research projects, many of which are open access.
- Memberships and support—We provide support for institutional memberships with Open Access publishers or organizations that develop and advance open infrastructure.
This statement of OA support is intended to guide decision-making processes as they pertain to funding and participation in open access publishing initiatives, both globally and locally. This publishing system is evolving, and experimentation is necessary in order for libraries, publishers, and our communities to find sustainable models for open research. We welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can enhance or improve our commitment to Open Access.
*This statement was adapted from Western Ontario Libraries. It was approved by UI Libraries Administrative Group, October 1, 2019.