Statement in Support of Open Access and
Open Educational Resources
Approved by The Ames Library faculty (11/5/21) and Library Advisory Committee (11/12/21)
鈥淥pen-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most
copyright and licensing restrictions.鈥� ()
鈥淥pen Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium 鈥� digital or otherwise 鈥� that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.鈥� ()
The Ames Library supports open access (OA) scholarly publishing and open educational resources by
- Providing an institutional repository, , where faculty and student scholarship is openly accessible and readily discoverable.
- Supporting faculty who wish to create and/or share open content with funding, technical support using the platform.
- Creating digital collections that enhance access to our special collections and archives as well as .
- Contributing metadata or items to open access digital collections such as the and the .
- Subscribing to publications of not-for-profit publishers when those publishers are trying to move toward OA publishing.
- Supporting staff who acquire, catalog, and process open materials to improve discovery of open content.
- Collaborating with to ensure that our library systems provide robust discovery of open content as well as paid content.
- Monitoring regional, national, and international trends and developments in and , sharing our knowledge and expertise with the campus community for purposes of scholarship and pedagogy.
- Integrating open resources and tools into instruction sessions for students to build their awareness of the economics of content creation, access, and licensing.
- Contributing collections funds in support of select OA initiatives.
- Examples of initiatives for consideration include: , , , , , , the , , and .
- Continuing memberships in advocacy organizations such as the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (), the Library Publishing Coalition (), the through CARLI.
- Participating in research or professional activities that support open, such as the and .
Criteria against which open initiatives are assessed for support:
- Type of funding (institutional support, grant funding, article processing charges, other)
- Business plan for long-term sustainability
- Relevance of content to the liberal arts curriculum
- Cost of participation
- Availability of usage statistics
- Ability to participate in governance
- Integration of workflows with distribution outlets
- Inclusion of metadata in discovery systems
- Archiving practices that include preservation strategies
- User interface
- Local and global benefits