Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:53:14 -0700 (PDT)

Dear colleagues

After discussion with the deans and approval from the provost, the Library will be setting aside a portion of the recent library allocation-$50,000 of the $300,000- to support faculty who wish to publish in open access journals. Many of you have expressed increasing alarm with the rising costs of scholarly journals, particularly those published by the commercial sector. It is clear to all of us that the current model of scholarly publishing is not sustainable, and a new model for disseminating peer-reviewed research is essential. Several universities are taking steps to promote a more open system. UC-Berkeley has developed an 18-month pilot program called the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/brii/ that can serve as a model for a UO pilot. The program subsidizes, in various degrees, fees charged to authors who prefer to publish in peer-reviewed journals that are freely available to the scholarly community-as opposed to those that are avaiblable only through costly subscriptions. A pilot project will also yield data that can be used to measure faculty interest and fiscal impacts of a new model.

I will be working with the University Library Committee in crafting a mechanism for providing faculty support and assessing the results of a pilot project.

Deborah A. Carver
Philip H. Knight Dean of Libraries
University of Oregon
dcarver@uoregon.edu
541-346-1892