[BOAI] Open Access Policy at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Chloé Georas at the University of Puerto Rico School of
Law.  The versions of these documents which I forwarded just a few minutes
ago contained seven stray question marks, a regrettable side-effect of
converting them to plain-text.  I regret the errors.  This is the corrected
text.  --Peter Suber.]


PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Publication

Adoption of Open Access Policy

by the University of Puerto Rico School of Law

      On March 24, 2010, the Faculty of the University of Puerto Rico School
Of Law unanimously approved the adoption of an Open Access Policy (“OAP”) in
order to share the fruits of its research and scholarship as broadly as
possible and reduce barriers to access them.  Through the OAP, articles
accepted for publication of the Faculty of the School of Law will be
available for free to the general public in an online digital repository.

      With the adoption of the OAP, the School of Law deepens its commitment
to the global movement of open access, which promotes the free and
unrestricted access to materials published digitally and placed online that
are the product of academic endeavors.  The open access movement is built
around the principle that knowledge is a public good and, accordingly, the
fruits of knowledge should be distributed for use by everyone, locally and
globally.

      The PAA was developed by the Cyberlaw Clinic of the Legal Aid Clinic
at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law.  The students of the Clinic,
under the direction of Prof. Chloé S. Georas, studied the theoretical, legal
and technical aspects that underlie the PAA and based its design on similar
policies adopted at other institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (
http://info-libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/faculty-and-researchers/mit-faculty-open-access-policy/)
and Harvard University (
http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/OpenAccess/policytexts.php).

      Please refer to the attached document of the PAA adopted by the
University of Puerto Rico School of Law.

----------

OPEN ACCESS POLICY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO SCHOOL OF LAW

Adopted March 24, 2010

The Faculty of the University of Puerto Rico School of Law
(hereinafter "Faculty") is committed to disseminating the fruits of its
research and scholarship as widely as possible and reducing barriers to
access them. Accordingly, the Faculty will use new technologies to
facilitate access, both locally and globally, to the knowledge generated at
the School of Law.

In support of the global open access movement in academia, the
Faculty adopts the following Open Access Policy (hereinafter "OAP"):

Each Faculty member grants to the School of Law permission to make available
his or her scholarly articles accepted for publication in an online
digital repository (hereinafter "Repository") and to exercise copyright in
these articles in order to disseminate them as widely as possible. In legal
terms, each Faculty member grants the University of Puerto Rico a
non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise, and authorize
others to exercise, any and all rights under copyright relating to each of
his or her scholarly articles accepted for publication, provided that: (1)
said grant is limited to the purpose of storing, preserving, publishing and
distributing the articles in electronic form in the aforementioned
Repository or other third party electronic platforms; and, (2) the
University and authorized third parties exercise said rights only for the
non-profit purposes of ensuring public and free access to the articles. The
grant of this non-exclusive license to the University of Puerto
Rico includes the authority to make translations of both the articles and
their synopses, subject to the approval of the translations by the author.

The OAP will apply to all scholarly articles accepted for publication,
written as author or co-author, while the person is a member of the Faculty,
that is, a full or part-time regular or adjunct professor, with the
exception of any articles completed before the adoption of this OAP and any
articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing
or assignment agreement before to the adoption of this OAP.

The OAP allows Faculty members to negotiate with publishers or
scholarly journals, as needed, a temporary embargo after the publication of
the article during which the article would neither be visible nor accessible
to the public in the Repository. The temporary embargo enables the publisher
or journal to distribute and sell the article exclusively during the embargo
period, but at the end of said period, the item becomes available to the
general public in the Repository.

In accordance with the OAP outlined above, we have prepared an Open Access
Author Agreement for the deposit of scholarly articles subject to the OAP
in the Repository and an Amendment to the Publication Agreement through
which the authors notify publishers or academic journals that an article is
subject to the OAP of the School of Law.

The non-exclusive license granted under the OAP in no way impairs
the ownership rights of a Faculty member over his or her work. Every Faculty
member may opt to exempt a particular article from the application of the
OAP.

Although a Faculty member may opt for a temporary embargo under the OAP or
choose to exempt a particular article from the application of the OAP, in
such cases the article must always be deposited in the Repository, where it
will remain invisible during the period of time specified by the Faculty
member. In this way, the Repository can serve as the institutional memory of
the intellectual production generated at the School of Law.

In order to assist the University in distributing the scholarly articles,
each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the final version of
their article accepted for publication to a representative designated by the
Publications Committee in an appropriate format (i.e. PDF) specified by said
Committee. The designated representative will receive the final version
accepted for publication no later than the date of publication. Said
representative will place the article in the Repository according to the
specifications of the Faculty member.

The OAP will be implemented in accordance with the University of
Puerto Rico’s policy regarding digital repositories.

The Publications Committee will be responsible for interpreting the
OAP, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and
recommending changes to the OAP to the Faculty.

The OAP will take effect immediately and will be assessed in five years
at which time the Publications Committee will present a report to the
Faculty.
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