Wake Forest University
AC-11: Open Access to Research

Open access support at Wake Forest University began in earnest in 2008, with the establishment of an Open Access Fund to support faculty seeking to publish in OA venues that charge processing fees, but who did not have research grants available to pay such fees. Since the Fund's founding, 50 applications have been approved for funding, representing 38 faculty from 15 departments publishing with 23 publishers. Also in 2008, the Graduate School began requiring mandatory deposit of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) for all students, to be included in an openly accessible collection in the institutional repository, WakeSpace. Although all ETDs are open to the campus community, students are permitted to select an embargo period, during which their ETD is not accessible beyond the University. From 2008 to 2015, an open-ended, "permanent" embargo was permitted; this was changed to a maximum embargo of 5 years. The sole OA policy applies to the library faculty of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Adopted by unanimous vote at the Librarians’ Assembly on February 1, 2010, the OA policy requires mandatory deposit of the final author's manuscript of peer-reviewed articles after publication. Whenever possible, the final published version is deposited. Publishers' requests for embargoes are respected, although the article is made immediately available to the campus community during the embargo period. Waivers may be granted by the Dean of the Library upon faculty author request.

The open access repository is hosted by the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, and includes faculty and student scholarship, ranging from peer-reviewed journal articles, datasets, white papers, conference presentations, theses and dissertations, and digital collections. ZSR Library and the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs offer funding to support faculty who wish to publish in OA venues that charge article processing fees, but who do not have grant funds available to cover such fees. And although not all faculty bodies at the University have adopted OA policies, the University's Faculty Senate unanimously voted in support of the institution signing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in November 2011.

The Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) collection in the institutional repository, WakeSpace, provides access to a rich resource of primary source research material. Many theses and dissertations are never published beyond whatever means the institution deems necessary for graduation, and as such, original research in these works is often difficult to discover. By opening the University's collection to the world, online, our graduate students' work has received broader recognition and use. Each year also sees WakeSpace being utilized as a data repository. Raw datasets, images, videos, and audio files have all been deposited by faculty for fulfillment of publisher or grant award requirements, or to ensure better preservation practices. It is anticipated that this use of the repository will continue to grow.