American University
AC-11: Open Access to Research

Institution facilitates open access publishing in at least one of the following ways. The institution:

A. Offers institutional repository hosting that makes versions of journal articles, book chapters, and other peer-reviewed scholarly works by its employees freely available on the public internet. The open access repository may be managed by the institution or the institution may participate in a consortial and/or outsourced open access repository.

B. Has a published policy that requires its employees to publish scholarly works open access or archive final post-peer reviewed (a.k.a. “'author's accepted manuscript”) versions of scholarly works in an open access repository.

While the policy may allow for publisher embargoes and/or provide a waiver option that allows authors to opt-out of the open access license/program for individual articles, policies and commitments that are strictly voluntary (i.e., opt-in) do not qualify. Likewise, open access policies published by external funding agencies do not qualify in the absence of a formal institutional policy.

C. Provides an open access article processing charge (APC) fund for employees that includes specified criteria and an application process. Discounts and ad hoc funding for APCs do not qualify in the absence of a formal ongoing program.

D. Provides open access journal hosting services (directly or through participation in a consortium) through which peer-reviewed open access journals are hosted on local servers with dedicated staff who provide publishing support at no (or minimal) cost.

Policies and programs adopted by entities of which the institution is part (e.g., government or university system) may count for this credit as long as the policies apply to and are followed by the institution.

This credit applies to all institutions where research is considered in employee promotion or tenure decisions. Institutions that do not consider research in promotion or tenure decisions as a matter of policy or standard practice may choose to mark all of the Research credits as Not Applicable. Pursuing one or more Research credits and marking other credits in the subcategory as Not Applicable is not allowed.

An institution earns the maximum of 2 points available for this credit by facilitating open access publishing in at least three of the ways outlined above. Partial points are available as follows:

Timeframe

Current policies and programs at the time of submission are eligible for this credit.

Sampling and Data Standards

Not applicable.