[GOAL] Good practices for university open-access policies

[Peter Suber]

In anticipation of worldwide Open Access Week, the Harvard Open Access
Project is pleased to release version 1.0 of a guide to good practices for
university open-access policies.

Gathering together recommendations on drafting, adopting, and implementing
OA policies, the guide is based on policies adopted at Harvard, Stanford,
MIT, and a couple of dozen other institutions around the world. But it's
not limited to policies of this type and includes recommendations that
should be useful to institutions taking other approaches.

The guide is designed to evolve. As co-authors, we plan to revise and
enlarge it over time, building on our own experience and the experience of
colleagues elsewhere. We welcome suggestions.

The guide deliberately refers to "good practices" rather than "best
practices". On many points, there are multiple, divergent good practices.
Good practices are easier to identify than best practices. And there can be
wider agreement on which practices are good than on which practices are
best.

The current version of the guide has the benefit of the advice of expert
colleagues, and the endorsement of projects and organizations devoted to
the spread of effective university OA policies. It has been written in
consultation with Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Ada Emmett, Heather Joseph, Iryna
Kuchma, and Alma Swan, and has already been endorsed by the Coalition of
Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI), Confederation of Open Access
Repositories (COAR), Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), Enabling
Open Scholarship (EOS), Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP), Open Access
Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition (SPARC), and SPARC Europe.

Over time we hope to name more consulting experts and endorsing
organizations. Please contact us if you or your organization may be
interested. We do not assume that consulting experts or endorsing
organizations support every recommendation in the guide.

The guide should be useful to institutions considering an OA policy, and to
faculty and librarians who would like their institution to start
considering one. We hope that institutions with working policies will share
their experience and recommendations, and that organizers of Open Access
Week events will link to the guide and bring it to the attention of their
participants.

Good practices for university open-access policies
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Good_practices_for_university_open-access_policies

Stuart Shieber
Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Office for Scholarly
Communication, Harvard University
http://www.seas.harvard.edu/~shieber

Peter Suber
Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, Special Advisor to the Harvard
Office for Scholarly Communication, and Fellow at the Berkman Center for
Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/psuber

Harvard Open Access Project
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap
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