Vote expected early 2010 on U. Virginia OA policy

Roxana Mullafiroze, Faculty debate copyrighted works resolution, C-Ville, December 1, 2009.

Over one year after UVA's Faculty Senate formed its Task Force on Scholarly Publications and Authors' Rights, debate continues on a resolution regarding copyrights and faculty publications. Though this resolution was expected to be voted on at the Senate's last meeting of the semester on November 20, lack of consensus pushed the vote back until next semester. ...

The Task Force consulted a variety of disciplines and schools throughout the process and found two main areas of dissatisfaction: the mandatory nature of the resolution and the implementation of the repository. These concerns came up at the November 20 meeting. A common theme appeared to be a desire for a discipline-specific approach to the issue. For example, representatives from the Physics and Mathematics departments explained that much of their research is collaborative with non-UVA faculty, and as such, coordinating publication contracts across multiple institutions would be difficult and an added burden.

Another concern comes from faculty in the School of Architecture and the department of Art History. While the repository would be text-only, professors from these disciplines rely on illustrations to convey their work. Thus, they would be forced to opt out of the open access network. The next step for the Task Force is to consider the comments from the Senate meeting and to draft a new resolution, perhaps with the assistance of those faculty members in opposition. The Task Force expects to present an updated resolution that is quite different when the Senate reconvenes in February 2010.