When faculty publish their work in scholarly journals, they are often asked to sign away their copyright to the journal publisher. This loss of copyright means that faculty may not retain the right to post the article on their own web site or to make it electronically available through an electronic archive. Many scholarly societies and research universities have come to see this restriction on the free exchange of ideas as a crisis, and have developed recommendations and procedures advocating that faculty negotiate to retain their copyright privileges.
In an effort to encourage more open access to scholarly works, the library has a small fund available to cover the costs of open access fees. More information about APCs and our deposit accounts.
SPARC has prepared an Author Addendum (pdf), a document which authors of articles may use to negotiate to retain rights at the time of submission to publishers.
For more information, see the SPARC web site for Resources for Authors.