Oberlin College Open Access Policy
Welcome to Oberlin College's Open Access Policy webpage. The primary goal of the policy, which was adopted by unanimous vote of the General Faculty on November 18, 2009, is to maximize dissemination of scholarship produced at Oberlin.
Compliance with the policy is easy. Upon publication of a peer-reviewed article, a faculty or A&PS author simply submits the final peer-reviewed manuscript and bibliographic information for the article using the web submission form. The author may also email the article manuscript and bibliographic information to Alan Boyd, the Scholarly Communications Officer.
The Scholarly Communications Officer and the library staff will:
- check the publisher’s policy to see if the article can be made openly accessible
- communicate with the author about any incompatibilities between the college’s open access policy and the publisher’s policy,
- if necessary, advise the author about options for requesting a policy waiver for the article or submitting an author addendum to the publisher,
- record bibliographic information for the article in OberlinScholarshipOA, Oberlin’s open access repository, and
- deposit the article itself in the repository and make it openly accessible, if legal requirements are met.
The key elements of Oberlin's policy are the following:
- The policy applies to peer-reviewed journal articles published after the policy was adopted (November 18, 2009).
- Only peer-reviewed journal articles are subject to the policy, although faculty and A&PS are encouraged to report and submit all other publications as well.
- Articles and their bibliographical data are to be submitted upon publication.
- The policy has an opt-out provision. Authors are automatically granted waivers for individual articles upon submission of the publication data with an accompanying reason for requesting the waiver, such as a publisher policy that does not allow an article to be made openly accessible.
- A basic mechanism for the policy is an institutional license that gives Oberlin College the right to make all articles authored by faculty and A&PS openly accessible in the institutional repository.
- Authors may withdraw their articles at any time from the repository by requesting a waiver and stating a reason.