Faculty Senate adopts Open Access Resolution
WU Record, June 28, 2011

Text of WUSTL Open Access Resolution

Adopted by the Faculty Senate Council: December 21, 2010. Adopted at the Faculty Senate meeting: May 9, 2011

The Faculty of Washington University in St. Louis is committed to making its scholarship and creative works freely and easily available to the world community. Faculty members are encouraged to seek venues for their works that share this ideal. In particular, when consistent with their professional development, members of the Faculty should endeavor to:

• Amend copyright agreements to retain the right to use his or her own work and to deposit such work in a University digital repository or another depository, which is freely accessible to the general public;
• Submit a final manuscript of accepted, peer-reviewed publications to one of the University’s digital repositories whenever consistent with the copyright agreement;
• and Seek publishers for his or her works committed to free and unfettered access (often referred to as open access publishers) whenever consistent with his or her professional goals.

This resolution applies only to scholarly articles authored or co-authored by a member of the Faculty since the adoption of this policy.

Currently, there is no systematic University-wide coordinated program to assist Faculty with managing the rights to their scholarly articles, nor is there any mechanism for facilitating the accessibility and dissemination of these works from within the University. The Faculty encourages the Offices of the Provost and the University’s Libraries to establish digital repositories and to provide author support services to aid the Faculty in providing greater access to their work. At this time and as a practical matter, this resolution covers only scholarly articles and does not extend to other forms of scholarly and creative work such as books, art, music, blogs, presentations, or curriculum materials. The Offices of the Provost and the University’s Libraries should encourage any faculty member who would be willing to join in this resolution, regardless of type of scholarly and creative work generated.