Appendix G: OA statement

Please note this statement has been updated and revised and

now resides on The Ames Library website. (09/08/22)

STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

Approved by Ames Library faculty and Library Advisory Committee  February 15, 2017

“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”[1]

The Ames Library supports open access (OA) scholarly publishing by

  • Providing an institutional repository, Digital Commons @ IWU, where faculty and student scholarship is openly accessible and readily discoverable.
  • Creating digital collections that enhance access to our special collections and archives as well as faculty and student research and creative activity.
  • Subscribing to publications of not-for-profit publishers when those publishers are trying to move toward OA publishing.  
  • Working behind the scenes to improve discovery systems so that OA content is as readily discoverable as paid content.
  • Monitoring developments in OA.
  • Contributing collections funds in support of select OA initiatives.
  • Examples of initiatives for consideration include: Open Library of Humanities, Lever Press, Open Book Publishers, Open Access Network,  PeerJ, BioMed Central, the Directory of Open Access Journals, Internet Archive, and Knowledge Unlatched.  

Criteria against which OA 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


[1] Suber, Peter, “A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access,” last accessed October 7, 2016, http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm.