KU announces Open Access Publishing Fund


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LAWRENCE — University of Kansas Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Jeff Vitter has announced the creation of a $50,000 author's fund to support open access scholarship at KU's Lawrence campus and the KU Medical Center.

The "One University" Open Access Publishing Fund will support KU faculty and staff authors who make published research available through the more than 8,000 open access journals. Open access is the policy of making all research authored by university authors available to society at large through an accessible, online database instead of limiting the work to academic journal subscribers. In 2009, KU became the first public university in the United States to institute an open access policy in regard to research published in peer-review journals.

"This new, central fund demonstrates strong commitment from the leadership at KU to advance open access as an alternative model for distribution of scholarship at both the Lawrence campus and the medical center," said Lorraine Haricombe, dean of libraries at KU and the provost's designate for open access. "By creating this fund, we are aligning KU with other major research institutions and taking another important step in transforming open access from an evolving, alternate model of publishing to a maturing threat to existing publishing models. This change is vital as we address the public good implicit in creating new scholarly research."

The initial funding will support the creation of a two-year pilot program. Both campuses will administer the program, and support will be available to faculty researchers at the Lawrence campus and the KU Medical Center.

KU has been a leader in the growing open access movement. In 2011, the university took a lead role in the formation of the Coalition on Open Access Policy Institutions. Known as COAPI, the group includes 46 universities throughout North America such as Harvard, Duke, Stanford and Concordia University in Montreal and collaborates to share implementation strategies and advocates on a national level for institutions with open access policies.

"One of our missions as a research university is to create knowledge and share it widely to help further the greater good of society. We cannot achieve this by limiting our findings to a select population," Vitter said. "This fund demonstrates to our faculty throughout the university that we are committed to supporting their work and helping distribute the publication of their efforts."


Mon, 10/22/2012

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Mike Krings

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