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Scholarly Publishing and Open Access: UW Faculty Open Access Policy

UW Faculty Open Access Policy

As of June 1, 2018, the Faculty of the University of Washington have an Open Access Policy intended to make their research and scholarship freely and widely available to the people of Washington and the broader international research community. This policy is similar to open access policies enacted at dozens of other universities and reflects the University of Washington's commitment to contribute to the public good through the widest possible sharing of its research and scholarship.

What UW Faculty Authors Need to Know

The UW Faculty OA Policy provides new options for authors who want to share their scholarly articles openly. UW faculty authors can now deposit an "author's final version," or "post-print" of their research articles in an open-access repository, with the full support of the University.

An author's final version is the post-peer reviewed draft that a publisher accepts for publication, typically the author's final draft before formatting and copyediting.

Through the OA Policy, faculty also grant to the University a limited, non-exclusive license that enables the UW to make their articles freely and widely available in an open access repository. Authors retain copyright to their work unless they transfer it to their publisher or another third party.

Faculty authors have several ways to participate int he OA Policy. Faculty authors can:

  • Deposit the author's final version of their accepted manuscript in the UW's institutional repository, ResearchWorks
  • Deposit the author's final version of their accepted manuscript in a non profit disciplinary repository (for examle, PubMed Central or arXv)
  • Publish the author's final version of their article in an open access journal

Faculty authors control all of the decisions regarding the questions of where to publish and whether to make their scholarly articles openly available.

Faculty authors may need to add an author addendum to their publishing contract in order to make their articles openly available. The UW's faculty author addendum is linked below.

If needed, authors may opt out of the Policy for a specific article by requesting a waiver. Waivers are automatically granted at the discretion of the author. 

The UW Faculty OA Policy applies to scholarly articles published by UW faculty after June 1, 2018.

Links for next steps: