Our commitment to open

What our commitment means

The University of Arizona Libraries is committed to the value of open. We support open practices and initiatives – including open access, open data, open educational resources, and open source software. This enables a more equitable, collaborative, and sustainable global system of knowledge exchange. Openness reduces barriers to access, innovation, and sharing.

We develop our services and outreach, initiatives and programs, and policies and procedures to incorporate openness whenever and however possible. Leading by example, we strive to nurture a culture of openness throughout the University of Arizona campus and beyond.

Default to Open

In 2019, our faculty, staff, and administration drafted Default to Open, which documents and acknowledges our commitment to openness as a value. We provide examples of our past and present open practices and suggest possible future actions. Our Cabinet leadership approved Default to Open in January 2020.

Library faculty Open Access position statement

Members of the Library Faculty Assembly (LFA) of the University of Arizona Libraries believe that open access to research and scholarship advances collective knowledge and accelerates innovation and discovery. Open access removes the financial barrier to research literature, thus fostering collaboration, sharing, and equitable access. As Arizona’s land grant university, we have an obligation to engage in activities that benefit the local, regional, and global community.

As members of the General Faculty of the University of Arizona, we will support and abide by the UA Open Access Policy (passed April 4, 2016) that specifies that “Each faculty member grants the University of Arizona permission to make their articles freely available in an Open Access repository.”

In addition, we will:

1. Make our research available whenever possible by selecting publishers that have either adopted open access policies, publish content online without restriction, and/or allow authors to self-archive their publications on the web
2. Deposit a digital copy of the final accepted (post peer review) manuscript of our scholarly articles and conference proceedings into the UA Campus Repository as per the UA Open Access Policy
3. Choose open access publication or self-archiving for our other scholarly output in formats such as presentations, posters, white papers, book chapters, and books
4. Give equal consideration to peer-reviewed articles published in open access journals during the tenure and promotion process and encourage this practice throughout the university
5. Support the development and management of initiatives, projects, and infrastructures that promote open access to scholarship at UA
6. Inform, discuss and engage with the entire UA community on scholarly publication issues, including open access, copyright, author rights, and publication agreements
7. Educate UA faculty about the scholarly and societal benefits of open access publication, assisting them in identifying potential publishing venues, and providing guidance on how to understand and request amendments to copyright agreements
8. Encourage UA faculty to support the UA Open Access Policy by depositing an electronic copy of the final accepted (post peer review) manuscript of their scholarly articles and conference proceedings into the UA Campus Repository

In December 2019, this statement was approved by the University of Arizona Library Faculty Assembly (LFA). This statement represents the LFA membership’s recognition of the importance of open access to research and scholarship and its commitment to sharing the membership’s research and scholarship as widely as possible.