Overall Rating	Silver
Overall Score	61.63
Liaison	Leslie North
Submission Date	March 1, 2024

STARS v2.2

Western Kentucky University
AC-11: Open Access to Research

Status	Score	Responsible Party
	1.33 / 2.00	Madeline Petty Graduate Assistant Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences

"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Open access repository

Does the institution offer 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?:

Yes

Website URL where the open access repository is available:

http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/

A brief description of the open access repository:

TopSCHOLAR® is a digital repository and publishing platform that provides open access to scholarly works created by the faculty, students, and staff of Western Kentucky University. It ensures that the intellectual output of WKU is archived and shared worldwide.

Open access policy

Does the institution have a published policy that requires its employees to publish scholarly works open access or archive final post-peer reviewed versions of scholarly works in an open access repository?:

A copy of the institution's open access policy:

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The institution's open access policy:

There is not an official university-wide policy for faculty research to be open access, but WKU faculty serving as lead faculty can publish in any Springer and American Chemical Society publication without open access fees. Visit https://libguides.wku.edu/publishing for more detail.

All students, faculty, and staff submitting research must sign the "Copyright Permission for TopSCHOLAR," consenting to the following: "I hereby grant Western Kentucky University the permission to copy, display, perform, distribute for preservation or archiving in any form necessary, this work in TopSCHOLAR™digital repository for worldwide unrestricted access in perpetuity."

Does the policy cover the entire institution? :

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APC fund

Does the institution provide an open access article processing charge (APC) fund for employees?:

A brief description of the open access APC fund:

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Open access journal hosting

Does the institution provide open access journal hosting services through which peer-reviewed open access journals are hosted on local servers with dedicated staff who provide publishing support at no (or minimal) cost?:

Yes

A brief description of the open access journal hosting services:

This is part of our topSCHOLAR system and program. Please see https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/peer_review_list.html

Optional Fields

Estimated percentage of peer-reviewed scholarly works published annually by the institution’s employees that are deposited in a designated open access repository:

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Website URL where information about the institution’s support for open access is available:

https://libguides.wku.edu/publishing

Additional documentation to support the submission:

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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

Information provided by WKU University Libraries.

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.