The University of Virginia Faculty Senate discussed a draft resolution on open access to scholarship at their September 23rd meeting with the intention that senators vote on it in November. The resolution was presented by the senate's Task Force on Scholarly Publication and Authors' Rights, represented by Edmund Kitch, a law professor, and committee chair Brian Pusser, a professor at the Curry School of Education.
As reported by UVa Today on September 28th,
"Under the proposed resolution, U.Va. faculty members would assign to the rector and Board of Visitors "a nonexclusive, irrevocable, non-commercial global license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of her or his scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided the articles are not sold for profit."
The policy would apply to all scholarly articles written by faculty members while at U.Va., except pieces that were written before the policy is adopted and remain under "incompatible" licensing agreements. All other articles would be turned over to the provost's office in electronic form and made generally available no sooner than 12 months after their journal publication.
"Scholarship is done for the benefit of mankind and it should be accessible to everyone," Kitch said.
There are many avenues for disseminating scholarly work, particularly with the Internet, he said. Authors should be aware of their rights, which they often sign away to the publisher. Because of this, he said, many authors have no right to post their material on the Internet.
Authors should be aware of the rights they have to their works, he said, and should specify, as an example, that they want the rights to revert to them when the material goes out of print.
"Raise questions with your publisher," he said.
Madelyn Wessel, special adviser to the University librarian and a member of the task force, said the current resolution is based on a similar policy at Harvard University.
She said there is great potential to put scholarly work on the Internet and also urged faculty authors to negotiate with their publishers."
For more information on authors' rights, see the VCU Libraries' Copyright and Authors Rights guide to resources, specifically the "Author's Rights" section.