Position Statement on Open Access for University of Alberta Librarians

Librarians at the University of Alberta recognize the importance of open access to content creators and researchers in fostering new ideas and creating knowledge. In keeping with our long-standing support of the Open Access movement, University of Alberta librarians have adopted a statement to communicate our commitment to disseminating our scholarly and other work as widely as possible, and to making these contributions available in perpetuity through deposit in an open access repository or through other acceptable means. It should be read and interpreted consistently with University of Alberta policies and other agreements related to academic freedom and intellectual property.

Position Statement

Academic librarians at the University of Alberta commit to making a reasonable effort to publish and share in venues providing unrestricted public access to their works. When appropriate, they will assign a Creative Commons licence to their works, endeavour to publish in open access venues, and/or to secure the right to self-archive their published materials, and deposit these works in an open access repository.

Guidelines

This Position Statement applies to all scholarly and other works as appropriate. Examples of works might include:

• Scholarly and professional articles
• Substantive presentations, including slides and text
• Books/book chapters
• Reports
• Substantive pedagogical materials such as online tutorials
• Other scholarship appropriate to the discipline (e.g. research data, source code, working papers, policy documents, etc.)

Works should be made available and/or deposited in an open access repository as soon as possible, recognizing that some publishers may impose an embargo period. Publishing in journals that enforce embargoes longer than 12 months is incompatible with the collective commitments embodied by this Position Statement.

This Position Statement was passed by the Library Council on April 19, 2023.