Oberlin College
AC-11: Access to Research

The primary goal of the policy, which was adopted by unanimous vote of the General Faculty on November 18, 2009, is to maximize dissemination of scholarship produced at Oberlin. The Oberlin Institutional Repository resides on servers supported by OhioLINK utilizing DSpace, a widely-accepted open source repository software platform. The repository is be backed up, mirrored, and made open to harvesting by search services such as OAIster and Google Scholar . The repository is managed under the Ohio Educational Technology Division to ensure its availability, longevity, and functionality, to the extent technologically feasible.

The General Faculty of Oberlin College is committed to disseminating the results of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the General Faculty adopts the following policy: Each member of the General Faculty and the Administrative and Professional Staff grants to Oberlin College permission to make his or her scholarly journal articles openly accessible in the College’s institutional repository. In legal terms, the permission granted by each General Faculty and A&PS member is an irrevocable, nonexclusive, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise all rights under copyright for purposes of making his or her scholarly articles openly accessible in an institutional repository, and to authorize other parties (such as OhioLINK) to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for income or profit. The license will be waived for a given article at any time upon request of the author stating the reason for the request. The policy will apply to all scholarly journal articles published while the person is a member of the General Faculty or A&PS except for: any articles published before the adoption of this policy; any articles for which the General Faculty or A&PS member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy; or any articles for which the author requests a waiver. Scholarly articles are understood to be articles published in peer-reviewed journals. To assist the College in cataloguing and distributing the published scholarship of its faculty, each General Faculty and A&PS member will, upon publication of the article, provide an electronic copy of the author’s final peer-reviewed version of the article, along with the appropriate bibliographical data, to the Scholarly Communications Officer. This copy will be provided free of charge and in an appropriate format (such as PDF), as specified by the General Faculty Library Committee in consultation with the General Faculty Council. The Scholarly Communications Officer will automatically waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written request by the author, explaining the need for the waiver. Waivers will only be granted after the bibliographical data of the publication have been submitted. While this policy only covers peer-reviewed journal articles, members of the General Faculty and A&PS are strongly encouraged also to provide bibliographical data and, where possible, the full text, of any other publication (such as chapters and essays in edited volumes, reference articles, non-peer-reviewed articles, and monographs), for inclusion in the Institutional Repository. The repository will provide links to the final published versions of all publications. The General Faculty Library Committee, in consultation with the General Faculty Council, will be responsible for interpreting this policy, establishing guidelines for its implementation, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the General Faculty from time to time. The policy will be reviewed by the General Faculty Library Committee after three years and a report presented to the General Faculty. The day-to-day administration of this policy will be the responsibility of the Scholarly Communications Officer, who will be a member of the library staff designated by the Director of Libraries. The Officer will process the publication data and texts submitted; process any waiver requests; and assist individual faculty in clarifying publishers' policies with regard to repositories, as well as any negotiation with publishers concerning copyright.

The library strongly encourages Oberlin scholars to consider an open access publisher when preparing a manuscript for review. All Oberlin College authors are eligible for reduced fees with both BMC and the Public Library of Science, thanks to the Library's consortial memberships in those organizations.