Access to scholarly articles penned by Duke faculty will soon be available to the general public through a digital repository.
At the Academic Council meeting Thursday, faculty members passed the Duke Open Access policy proposed by the task force’s co-chairs, Cathy Davidson, Ruth F. Devarney Professor of English, and Paolo Mangiafico, director of digital information strategy. The proposal passed unanimously.
The Open Access policy provides Duke scholars with the choice of giving the University the legal basis to publish articles on a database called DukeSpace, which will be available to anyone who seeks them.
“We are making the fruits of our intellectual labors available,” Davidson said. “Most faculty do what we do because we believe in research and scholarship and believe in knowledge in the service of society.”
Faculty members that participate will grant Duke a limited non-exclusive license, allowing the University specified use of faculty work, but will still allow authors to retain the rights and ownership of their work. DukeSpace will allow full articles to be accessible through all kinds of services, such as Google Scholar, provided there is no charge to access the article.
“This is a modest proposal,” Davidson said. “It is ironic that in the information age, scholarly work is gated and inaccessible. It is ironic that commercial journals can charge exorbitant subscription fees that cripple libraries and limit what other scholarly journals and university press books can be purchased.”
DukeSpace will be a permanent storage space for digital copies of scholarly articles ensuring availability to readers in case the original publisher or journal becomes unavailable.
Duke will join Harvard University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Institutes of Health in the step to adopt an open access policy and digital repository service.
Deborah Jakubs, University librarian and vice provost for library affairs, said Duke Libraries is committed to a public database of articles to keep up with the digital age. She noted that the library, in conjunction with the Office of Information Technology and other University departments, will finance this policy.
The initiative will be reviewed after three years and a report will be compiled and presented to faculty. The policy is still flexible, allowing authors to decide where to publish their work and how to accommodate the requirements of their publishers. Scholarly Communications Officer Kevin Smith will assist faculty members who are unsure about certain fair use policies.
The detailed logistics of the policy are not fully developed. Once a concrete service model is created, Davidson and Mangiafico will return and present it to the Council.
“I’m pleased that it passed, even though there is still a lot of work to do by those who presented the initiative,” Provost Peter Lange said. “It is important that the University express their commitment to scholarly work.”
In other business:
President Brodhead gave an update on the February Board of Trustees meeting. Brodhead noted that the Trustees evaluated the priorities of the University based on the economy.
The Council approved the transition of orthopedic surgery from a division in the department of surgery to a new, separate department.
The meeting concluded with a closed executive session in which faculty discussed Duke’s financial situation. Lange declined to comment on the discussion following the session.
“All would be revealed soon,” he said.
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