Penn State University Faculty Senate Endorses Open Access Research Policy

From Penn State University:

The Senate took a major step to affirm the University’s commitment to making Penn State research widely available to the public by endorsing a proposed policy supporting research submissions to open access journals.

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The new policy encourages Penn State researchers to submit to open access publications, but maintains that researchers have the freedom to submit their work to publications of their choice, including both open access journals and journals with a more traditional fee-based publishing model.

Promoting open access research publishing has been a topic of discussion since 2015, when the Senate passed a resolution in support of open access publishing. The newly passed policy, which must be implemented by the University president, builds on debate from a previous meeting of the Faculty Senate about how to craft an open access policy that best supports and empowers researchers.

Penn State Altoona Associate Professor of Sociology Nicholas Rowland, who succeeded Bérubé as chair of the Senate at the end of the April 23 meeting, called the new open access policy “a landmark, the effects of which we will feel for years to come.”

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Filed under: News, Open Access, Publishing