University of Arkansas
AC-11: Open Access to Research

The University of Arkansas Open Access Policy was passed unanimously at the Faculty Senate meeting on June 2, 2016. The access policy outlines the procedures and methods for divulging the fruits of their research and scholarship as widely as possible. Faculty members are encouraged to provide scholarly articles to the University of Arkansas, for the purpose of deposition in an open access institutional repository. The policy applies to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the current author(s) is a current faculty member of the University of Arkansas, the exception being articles previously completed before the policy's adoptions, or articles in which incompatible licensing or assignment agreements were conducted before the adoption of this policy. The policy license will not interfere with the rights of the faculty member authoring the work, and the Office of the Provost will be responsible for interpreting and reviewing (3 years time after the adoption of) this policy.

University of Arkansas Open Access Policy, 2016

The faculty, staff, and students of the University of Arkansas are committed to disseminating the fruits of their research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy:

1.Faculty members are encouraged to submit scholarly articles to the University of Arkansas for deposit in an open access institutional repository. For each article submitted to the institutional repository and subject to the license revocation exclusion set out in paragraph 3 below, each faculty member would grant non-exclusive distribution rights for the article to the University of Arkansas. This grant of non-exclusive distribution rights would transfer from the faculty member to the University of Arkansas a nonexclusive, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to the article, in any medium, provided that the article is not sold for a profit, nor that the University of Arkansas would gain any right to authorize others to do the same.

2. This policy applies to all scholarly articles, authored or co-authored, while the person is a member of the Faculty, except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy.

3. The license granted to the University of Arkansas by this policy will in no way interfere with the rights of a faculty member as the author of the work. Furthermore, the license granted to University of Arkansas for a submitted article, as described above in paragraph 1, may be revoked by the faculty member for the following reasons affecting the validity of the article content: unintentional mistakes, inclusion of sensitive data, article being redacted by the publisher, plagiarism or falsification of data. The license revocation will occur at the sole discretion of the faculty member upon written/electronic notification to the Director of the Institutional Repository stating the reason for the revocation. Upon receipt of the notice of the license revocation, the Director of the Institutional Repository will remove the article from the institutional repository. The revocation will be without sanction to the faculty member.

4. Consistent with the objective of establishing the institutional repository as an effective resource to advance knowledge and to heighten the scholarly reputation of the University of Arkansas, the university reserves the right to make curatorial judgments regarding the acceptance of specific articles for the institutional repository. For example, but not by way of limitation, acceptance may be limited to articles that have been sufficiently developed as scholarly pieces appropriate for publication in a recognized journal and area of scholarship. Further, the university reserves the right to remove articles for reasons including, but not limited to, institutional findings of plagiarism or falsification of data, or other forms of research misconduct. The Director of the Institutional Repository will make reasonable efforts to notify the author of such removal.

5. To assist in the open distribution of the scholarly articles, faculty members are requested to provide bibliographic information and an electronic copy of the author’s final version of each article to the Director of the Institutional Repository. In order to ensure that articles are available in a timely manner, it is recommended that faculty members provide articles within 30 days after the date of publication.

6. The Office of the Provost will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending policy changes to the faculty from time to time.

7. The Office of the Provost will institute a review of this policy three years after it is first approved and will forward it to the faculty for review and adoption of any needed policy changes that result from the review.

8. While the institutional repository is designed primarily for scholarly articles, supporting bibliographic material may also be submitted to the Director of the Institutional Repository to consider for inclusion in the repository. Again, the inclusion of such material is subject to curatorial discretion by the university.

The University of Arkansas' library webpage provides both explanations and links to the current open access policy, and journals currently publishing the released articles and research provided through the open access policy.