About

 

Advancing Open Scholarship is in the best interest of the public and of the University of Illinois. The high cost of access to publications that communicate the outcomes of research has exacerbated the growing gap in access between wellfunded higher education institutions and institutions with less financial support. The growing cost has also limited the public’s access to research and has strained the budgets of even wealthier institutions. The challenge of this growing gap in access has come to the attention of funding agencies, both in the U.S. and abroad, and many of these agencies have introduced requirements to ensure the broadest possible access to publications that result from their funding. As a publicly-funded land-grant institution, communicating our research to the public and to scholars at a broad array of higher education institutions is in our best interest. Research by University of Illinois scholars published behind paywalls will not reach the broadest possible audience and will see reduced citations as a result. Researchers at Illinois will also face barriers to meeting their obligations to funders and the public.

HELIOS will benefit U.S. efforts to advance Open Scholarship. A collective effort, connected to chancellors and presidents, will highlight best practices and coalesce initiatives, making impact more likely. The Community of Practice will also help highlight the need to ensure adequate funding for Open Scholarship. While Open Scholarship is free to read, the production of that scholarship has costs, and we must ensure that the publishing ecosystem is adequately funded. In its efforts to advance Open Scholarship and its benefits, it is critically important for HELIOS to formulate strategies that acknowledge and address the relationship between the cost of publishing, funding from our institutions, and funding from agencies that support research. At illinois, we believe that these strategies should include Open Access (OA) deposit requirements, community support models (e.g., Direct to Open), and innovative partnerships with publishers including Transformative Agreements. By addressing these financial barriers to access, we will see other important benefits, including more diverse perspectives and attention to the reproducibility of research.

Our efforts at the University of Illinois are focused on policy, outreach, and practice, and are outlined below. We have invested significantly in outreach and practice to support the campus and to foster a growing awareness of issues related to Open Access. These activities often grow from a partnership between the University Library and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (OVCRI). Our work addresses the needs of faculty and students, and routinely connects to entities like the Campus Research Administrators Working Group (CRAWG) and the University Senate, often through Senate committees. Notably, many of our efforts are based in the Library’s Scholarly Communications and Publishing unit.
Policy As we have seen at a number of leading higher education institutions, a policy addressing Open Access is critical to work in this area, and must come from and be supported by the faculty. The “SC.15.12 Open Access to Research Articles” policy was passed by the UIUC Senate on October 19, 2015. As a result of the policy, UIUC faculty grant to the University a non-exclusive license to all scholarly articles they produce.