Open Access Policy for the Academic Senate of the University of California
Adopted 7/24/2013

Also available as a PDF.

Preamble

The Faculty of the University of California is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In particular, as part of a public university system, the Faculty is dedicated to making its scholarship available to the people of California and the world. Furthermore, the Faculty recognizes the benefits that accrue to themselves as individual scholars and to the scholarly enterprise from such wide dissemination, including greater recognition, more thorough review, consideration and critique, and a general increase in scientific, scholarly and critical knowledge. Faculty further recognize that by this policy, and with the assistance of the University, they can more easily and collectively reserve rights that might otherwise be signed away, often unnecessarily, in agreements with publishers. In keeping with these considerations, and for the primary purpose of making our scholarly articles widely and freely accessible, the Faculty adopts the following policy:

Grant of License and Limitations

Each Faculty member grants to the University of California a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, for the purpose of making their articles widely and freely available in an open access repository. Any other systematic uses of the licensed articles by the University of California must be approved by the Academic Senate. This policy does not transfer copyright ownership, which remains with Faculty authors under existing University of California policy.

Scope and Waiver (Opt-Out)

The policy applies to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles published before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. Upon express direction by a Faculty member, the University of California will waive the license for a particular article or delay access to the article for a specified period of time.

Deposit of Articles

To assist the University in disseminating and archiving the articles, Faculty commit to helping the University obtain copies of the articles. Specifically, each Faculty member who does not permanently waive the license above will provide an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article to the University of California by the date of its publication, for inclusion in an open access repository. When appropriate, a Faculty member may instead notify the University of California if the article will be freely available in another repository or as an open-access publication. Faculty members who have permanently waived the license may nonetheless deposit a copy with the University of California or elsewhere for archival purposes.

Notwithstanding the above, this policy does not in any way prescribe or limit the venue of publication. This policy neither requires nor prohibits the payment of fees or publication costs by authors.

Oversight of Policy

The Academic Senate and the University of California will be jointly responsible for implementing this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending any changes to the Faculty. Any changes to the text of this policy will require approval by both the Academic Senate and the University of California. The Academic Senate and the University of California will review the policy within three years, and present a report to the Faculty and the University of California.

The Faculty calls upon the Academic Senate and the University of California to develop and monitor mechanisms that would render implementation and compliance with the policy as convenient for the Faculty as possible.