Model University Policy Regarding Faculty Publication in Scientific and Technical Scholarly Journals: A Background Paper and Review of the Issues

The attached model policy was drafted by a joint committee of faculty, librarians, and university press editors from Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [1] This effort is part of a two-year project of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) to develop strategies and plans for cooperative information resources development in the sciences and engineering. Grant support for the project has been provided by the Council on Library Resources in Washington, D.C. The distribution of this policy document is intended to stimulate debate and consensus building among faculty, librarians, university administrators, and scholarly publishers throughout the United States and abroad. The TRLN Copyright Policy Task Force does not expect that such a policy will be adopted unilaterally by any one institution. Rather, we believe the eventual widespread adoption of such a policy by consortia or national associations of universities could help to reduce the current barriers to the effective dissemination of new research, especially in science and engineering scholarly journals. Since the widespread distribution of the first draft of this model university policy regarding faculty publication in scholarly journals, the Task Force has received dozens of letters and electronic mail messages with both positive and negative reactions to the model, many offering specific suggestions to change, clarify, or improve the policy. While the majority of those writing supported the thrust of the proposed policy and encouraged the Task Force to find ways to work towards its adoption by universities, a substantial minority expressed concerns about specific features of the policy or a confusion about the problems being addressed and the goals to be achieved.