University of California Press, a leading university publisher in the humanities and social sciences, today announced revisions to its core- and partner-journal author agreements that allow authors much greater freedom to archive their work. The new agreements are emblematic of UC Press’ commitment to support its authors and have resulted in a Green designation for UC Press in the SHERPA/RoMEO Publisher Copyright and Self-Archiving classification system. UC Press Journals Authors are now freely able to archive their pre-prints and post-prints in institutional and personal archives as well as in free discipline-specific repositories...."As new business models unsettle the foundations on which traditional scholarly publishing is based, it becomes that much more important for University of California Press not to lose sight of its mission--to disseminate scholarship to the largest possible audience and to work closely with the public university system that it serves," said Rebecca Simon, Associate Director for the Journals & Digital Publishing Division of University of California Press. "The revisions to our author agreements, enabling authors to self-archive their work in repositories such as the California Digital Library’s eScholarship, make this mission easier to accomplish."
Comment. Three things of importance have happened here. First, a major press has moved forwards rather than backwards on its self-archiving policy. Second, it justified the improvements by appeal to the mission of the press. Third, it is so proud of the improvements that it issued a press release. Did you ever suspect that some publishers permitted self-archiving from pressure and hoped that no one would notice? The UPC press release is evidence that we've come a long way.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/19/2005 10:27:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
