Adopted May 19, 2021
The Faculty of California State University, East Bay is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In particular, as part of a public university system, the Faculty is dedicated to making its scholarship available to the people of California and the world. Faculties across leading universities have adopted comparable open access policies to retain rights to publicly share their articles, and CSUEB, which strives to be a national model of public comprehensive higher education and a leader in the CSU system, would be the first in the California State University system to adopt such a policy. Furthermore, the Faculty recognizes the benefits that accrue to themselves as individual scholars, the University as a whole, as well as the scholarly enterprise for such wide dissemination, including greater recognition and a general increase in scientific, scholarly, and critical knowledge. Faculty further recognize that with this policy they can more easily and collectively reserve rights of their scholarly articles that might otherwise be signed away, often unnecessarily, in agreements with publishers. Such a policy will give CSUEB a legal basis to host and provide public access to future Faculty scholarly articles. In keeping with these considerations, the Faculty adopts the following policy:
The Faculty is committed to making their scholarly articles widely and freely available in an open access repository. In keeping with that commitment, each Faculty member grants to CSUEB a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of their scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. This policy does not transfer or affect copyright ownership, which is determined by existing CSUEB policy1. This policy applies to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the person is a faculty unit employee2 or emeritus faculty member3, except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy or any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or publishing agreement before the adoption of this policy.
Upon express direction by a Faculty member, CSUEB will waive CSUEB’s license for a particular article (opt-out) or delay access to the article (embargo) for a specified period of time. Faculty opt-outs or embargoes shall not be used as a factor in retention, tenure, and promotion decisions.
To assist CSUEB in disseminating and archiving the scholarly articles, Faculty commit to helping the University obtain appropriate copies of the articles. Specifically, each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the accepted author manuscript of each article covered by this policy to CSUEB no later than the date of its publication, at no charge to CSUEB, and in an appropriate format specified by CSUEB, for inclusion in an open access repository. When appropriate, a Faculty member may instead notify CSUEB if the article will be freely available in another repository or as an open-access publication. Faculty members who have permanently waived the license may nonetheless deposit a copy with CSUEB for archival purposes.
Notwithstanding the above, this policy does not in any way prescribe or limit the venue of publication. This policy neither requires nor prohibits the payment of fees or publication costs by authors.
The University Libraries will be responsible for implementation of this policy. The Dean of the University Libraries will, in a timely manner, escalate questions of interpretation and application to the Academic Senate’s Committee on Research. Final authority for resolving questions rests with the Office of the Provost, as designee of the President. Any changes to the text of this policy will require approval by the Academic Senate. The University Libraries, in consultation with the Committee on Research, will review this policy within three years and then at intervals of no less than five years and present a report to the Faculty.
1 Intellectual property ownership is governed by the Academic Senate’s Intellectual Property Policy.
2 Faculty unit employee is defined in the California Faculty Association’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, Article 2.13.
3 Emeriti faculty membership is governed by the University Constitution and the associated Emeritus Policy.
