Academic Policy  1220.00

University of Arkansas Open Access Repository Policy

This policy governs the University of Arkansas Fayetteville institutional repository. The faculty, staff and students of the University of Arkansas are committed to disseminating the fruits of their research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy:

1. Faculty members are encouraged to submit scholarly work to the University of Arkansas for deposit in an open access institutional repository. For each work submitted to the institutional repository and subject to the license revocation exclusion set out in paragraph 3 below, each faculty member would grant non-exclusive distribution rights for the work to the University of Arkansas. This grant of non-exclusive distribution rights would transfer from the faculty member to the University of Arkansas a nonexclusive, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to the work, in any medium, provided that the work is not sold for a profit, nor that the University of Arkansas would gain any right to authorize others to do the same.
2. This policy applies to all scholarly works, authored or co-authored, while the person is a member of the Faculty, except for any works completed before the adoption of this policy and any works for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy.
3. The license granted to the University of Arkansas by this policy will in no way interfere with the rights of a faculty member as the author of the work. Furthermore, the license granted to University of Arkansas for a submitted work, as described above in paragraph 1, may be revoked by the faculty member for the following reasons affecting the validity of the work’s content: unintentional mistakes, inclusion of sensitive data, work being redacted by the publisher, plagiarism or falsification of data. The license revocation will occur at the sole discretion of the faculty member upon written/electronic notification to the institutional repository personnel stating the reason for the revocation. Upon receipt of the notice of the license revocation, the institutional repository personnel will remove the work from the institutional repository. The revocation will be without sanction to the faculty member.
4. Consistent with the objective of establishing the institutional repository as an effective resource to advance knowledge and to heighten the scholarly reputation of the University of Arkansas, the university reserves the right to make curatorial judgments regarding acceptance of specific works for the institutional repository. For example, but not by way of limitation, acceptance may be limited to works that have been sufficiently developed as scholarly pieces appropriate for publication in a recognized journal and area of scholarship. Further, the university reserves the right to remove works for reasons including, but not limited to, institutional findings of plagiarism or falsification of data, or other forms of research misconduct. The institutional repository personnel will make reasonable efforts to notify the author of such removal.
5. The Office of the Provost will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending policy changes to the faculty from time to time.
6. The Office of the Provost will institute a review of this policy in conjunction with the University Libraries every three years and will forward to the faculty for review and adoption any needed policy changes that result from the review.