The Diamondback - Faculty sens. battle over open access
Faculty sens. battle over open access
By: Tirza Austin
Posted: 4/24/09
An unforeseen debate erupted at the University Senate meeting yesterday about where faculty members should be encouraged to publish their research.
After more than half an hour of debate, the senate voted against a resolution that called for faculty members to publish their work in free online databases. Despite the potential savings open-access journals could bring to the university, the senate voted the resolution down in a 37-24 decision, due to perceived impositions on academic freedom.
"[The cost of scholarly journals] has to be one of the most challenging issues we have at this university," Senate Chair Ken Holum said.
The defeated resolution, proposed by the senate's faculty affairs committee, laid out four specific suggestions: for university President Dan Mote to advocate for open-access journals on a national level, to urge the libraries to educate faculty on the cost of journals and to encourage faculty to publish their research in open-access journals and deposit findings in open-access databases whenever possible.
Because so many faculty members are published in research journals that require subscriptions, the university has to pay for access to numerous journals every year. Dan Falvey, the chairman of the committee that authored the resolution, emphasized the proposal was not a university policy and didn't mandate any changes, but was rather intended to spark discussion about other options for journal access. But, Holum said, the discussion it sparked was largely "gloom and doom."
"Open access will kill the journals you need during your career," women's studies professor and university senator Claire Moses said. "It's as simple as that."
While everyone acknowledged that the high cost of scholarly journals and slimming library budgets needed to be addressed, many felt it was too soon to instate anything resembling university policy.
Terry Owen, a librarian who is a university senator, defended open-access publications, saying that because the publications do not require authors to assign copyright to a publisher, scholars can retain the rights to their own work.
"The final goal is to make information more accessible and available," Owen said.
But Moses, who has served as editorial director of the journal Feminist Studies since 1977, said any action promoting publishing only in open-access journals would harm the visibility of the university and its faculty members - especially its tenured faculty members.
Senators criticized the proposal for its language, which they said did not accurately characterize the variations that exist between departments. Throughout the debate, science professors faced off against humanities professors - a rift caused by the vast differences between scientific journals and humanities journals.
"This is a proposal that does not take into account the needs of different disciplines," history professor Gay Gullickson said. "[Open access] applies well to some disciplines and hurts others."
Both Moses and Gullickson argued the resolution's language was too strong to count as a mere suggestion and would eventually lead to university policy.
"This does not call for discussion - it urges the president to take action," Gullickson said.
But Holum predicted this will not be the last time the senate discusses the issue of open-access publications.
He added the situation facing the libraries will have to be addressed in the near future.
Arts and humanities Dean James Harris, who also served as the chairman of the search committee that will help elect a new dean of the library system, said every candidate he has encountered expressed concern over the state of scholarly publications, noting students turn to online search engines like Google rather than going to a library. Harris added that libraries are slowly becoming virtual and the university will eventually have to transition with them.
"This is happening," Harris said. "The train has left the station."
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