Faculty Senate Resolution on scholarly publishing
In light of rising journal costs and library collection budget concerns, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution encouraging university researchers and scholars to be more selective when considering where to submit their scholarly work.
"Our intention is to make faculty and academic researchers more mindful about how and where they chose to publish their work," said Ken Frazier, director of the UW-Madison Libraries. Frazier also noted that similar resolutions have been adopted at
Cornell University, Indiana University Bloomington, Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Below, the resolution outlines the reasons for this measure and guidelines for selecting journals when publishing scholarly work.
Faculty Senate Resolution in Support of Accessible Scholarly and Scientific Publication Submitted by the University Library Committee
University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries
Whereas, the commercialization of academic publishing threatens to undermine the research enterprise and the dissemination of knowledge to society, and
Whereas, as journal costs spiral out of reach, many scholars, researchers, students, and Wisconsin citizens are being cut off from vital knowledge resources, and
Whereas, as the university becomes less able to afford access to commercial journals and databases, the University of Wisconsin-Madison must, therefore, become less dependent on commercial information systems as the means of accessing and disseminating research and scholarship, and
Whereas, consequently, faculty and academic staff researchers—particularly those publishing in science, technology, engineering and medicine—must take action to ensure that their works are accessible to advance research and learning, and specifically should consider publishing their research articles in:
- Affordable not-for-profit journals published by professional societies and associations;
- Peer-reviewed “open access” journals and databases; and/or
- “Self-archiving” their works in information repositories supported by research institutions and professional societies.
Therefore be it resolved that the University of Wisconsin-Madison Faculty Senate supports and encourages the efforts of the campus libraries to control the cost of journals while maintaining high-quality research collections, and urges both the library and faculty to support alternatives to commercial ownership and management of scholarly and scientific publication.