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University Libraries Statement of Open Access Values

The development of contemporary information technologies has reached the point where the unfettered and virtually instantaneous movement of information among scholars separated widely in time and space has become a concrete possibility. Although traditional intellectual property law and scholarly publishing practices have made important initial strides to respond to the changed context of the digital era, the conceptual and practical structure of these institutions nonetheless derives from an era that predates the present ensemble of possibilities. As a result, legal practices and commercial interests continue to impose significant and, in many cases, ethically unjustifiable constraints on the free circulation of information among scholars. In full recognition of these facts, scholars and librarians in the open access (OA) movement seek to create and advance paradigms of scholarly production and dissemination online that disencumber scholarly activity from the meshes of intellectual property law and eliminate the proprietary and often exploitative barriers to access imposed by traditional publishers and database vendors.

As an institution of higher education committed to the intellectual and practical enrichment of all humanity, the scholarly community of the University at Buffalo (UB) seeks to ensure the broadest possible dissemination of the products of research and teaching by its members. In order to fully leverage the possibilities now given by technology, to help realize the benefits of research and teaching at UB for as many individuals and communities as possible across the globe, and also to guide future institutional and individual decision-making related to the dissemination of and access to the work of UB scholars, the University Libraries (UL) declares its commitment to the general vision of the OA movement, and it affirms the following statement of its concrete values and principles in relation thereto.

Whereas:

  • the free dissemination of scholarly and creative works of all kinds is a cornerstone of intellectual endeavor and arises from the most fundamental shared principles of intellectual life;
  • the current system supporting such dissemination has become economically unsustainable, intellectually obstructive, and ethically predatory;
  • the current system increasingly imposes prohibitive financial and practical costs on UL in particular and UB scholars and creators in general;
  • the current system increasingly contravenes the Mission of the UL in providing high-quality resources to enrich the activities of UB scholars and creators;
  • advances toward an environment rooted in OA principles represent the most effective and economically viable transformation of the current system, insofar as these principles increase discoverability, sustain impact, broaden collaboration, and improve public engagement beyond their present confines;
  • research, at UB and elsewhere, supported by either direct or indirect federal funding is increasingly subject to requirements about free public accessibility to the final products of funded efforts;

be it resolved that the University Libraries:

  • support global intellectual freedom by adopting OA methods wherever and whenever possible, keeping the means of production and distribution, including copyright, as much as possible in the hands of scholars and creators, and leading the global scholarly and creative community in the development of new production and distribution models;
  • promote critical understanding among UB scholars and creators about the legal armature of intellectual property and the range of production and distribution models in the current publishing landscape;
  • promote replicable and scalable tools, services, and platforms, both at UB and elsewhere, to render the economic basis of scholarly publishing more transparent, equitable, and sustainable;
  • promote the discovery and use of high-quality scholarly works in the public domain through OA publishing by scholars and creators, both at UB and elsewhere;
  • collaborate with strategic partners to develop institutional policies and practices that commute the foundations of the current system toward OA principles;
  • support innovative publications and scholarly experimentation that use OA methods but are still grounded in widely-used standards and time-proven practices;
  • combat the increasing costs of higher education for students through the promotion and integration of existing OA content into course curricula as well as through the creation and dissemination of new OA content by UB scholars and creators.

    • Submitted August 22, 2018
    Revised October 17, 2018

    Open Access Values Lightning Team

    • Christopher Hollister
    • Michael Kicey
    • Amada Start
    • John Beatty
    • Don Hartman