The Colorado State University Libraries, under the guidance of the CSU Faculty Council Committee on Libraries, has allocated $45,000 to establish the Open Access Research & Scholarship (OARS) Fund.  CSU tenured/tenure track faculty authors will be eligible for up to $2,500 of support per year.

Funding Guidelines and project details are available at: http://libguides.colostate.edu/oars

Note: Applications will be accepted from December 3, 2012 until May 15 2013, and funding is available on a first come, first served basis. Articles published after July 1, 2012 are eligible, and authors may apply to reserve funds before an article is submitted to an OA journal to insure that money is available when the article is accepted.

By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

---Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2001

What is open access?

Open Access is an international movement that has the goal of making peer-reviewed published scholarship available free of charge to the public and to the global scholarly community. ¹

In the traditional publishing paradigm, journal publishers generate revenue by charging libraries and individuals subscription fees.  At the time of publication, an article’s copyright is usually transferred to the publisher, and the publisher controls all right to reuse and distribution.  Use and redistribution is fee-based, limiting the audience to those who can afford a subscription.

In an open access environment, the costs of publishing an article in an open access journal are typically the responsibility of the author, but in return, the author usually maintains copyright and the work can be redistributed, shared, and freely accessed.  Studies have shown that articles published in open access journals are cited more frequently and downloaded more often than those published in traditional journals. 

Benefits of open access research² 

• Accelerated discovery. With open access, researchers can read and build on the findings of others without restriction.
• Public enrichment. Much scientific and medical research is paid for with public funds. Open access allows taxpayers to see the results of their investment.
• Improved education. Open access means that teachers and their students have access to the latest research findings throughout the world. 

More information on open access: 

• Open Access Overview by Peter Suber 
• Misleading open access myths 
• A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access by Peter Suber
• Why Open Access?  (SPARC/ARL)

Footnotes: 

1. http://www.lib.ku.edu/openaccess/
2. http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/

Committee Chair:

Michelle Wilde, Associate Professor
Librarian, Veterinary Medicine, Biomedical & Physical Sciences

Committee Members:

In autumn 2011, the CSU Libraries formed a committee to address open access in the context of strategic planning.   The Open Access Strategic Initiative Committee completed its work in April 2012 with the following strategic recommendations:

The CSU Libraries will:

1. Promote campus-wide awareness of scholarly communication trends and facilitate faculty participation in local and global open access initiatives.
2. Encourage free availability of scholarly information through support of open access publishing models, memberships in professional organizations, digitization of university assets, and participation in collaborative archival projects.
3. Enhance the visibility, accessibility, and impact of the University’s scholarship and unique resources in accordance with CSU’s Land Grant mission.

In order to advance these goals, the CSU Libraries Faculty Council unanimously adopted the Colorado State University Libraries’ Faculty Open Access Commitment on May 2, 2012.  Subsequently the CSU Libraries Faculty Council approved an amendment to the Bylaws to establish the Committee on Open Access and Scholarly Communication to address open access issues.  This committee began its work in October of 2012.