UC Open Access Policies
Two UC-wide open access policies expand the reach of scholarly articles by UC faculty, staff and employees by making them available around the world.
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Passed by the UC Academic Senate in July 2013, the UC Academic Senate Faculty Open Access Policy(opens in a new tab) covers more than 8,000 UC faculty and as many as 40,000 articles a year by faculty at all ten UC campuses.
On October 23, 2015, UC issued a Presidential Open Access Policy(opens in a new tab). From that date forward, it enables scholarly articles authored by all UC employees to be freely shared with readers worldwide. The culmination of efforts by UC faculty and staff to increase access to their scholarship, the policy covers clinical faculty, lecturers, staff researchers, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and librarians, among others(opens in a new tab).
Both policies allow employees to publish in academic journals of their own choosing; they do not require publishing in open access journals or paying open access publishing fees. Authors of journal articles grant UC a non-exclusive license prior to any contractual arrangements with publishers. The manuscripts of published articles can then be made publicly available through open repositories, typically via the UC’s own eScholarship(opens in a new tab) repository. This enables students, scholars and the general public to access them at no charge, which increases readership of and citations to the work. The policies also enable authors to re-use deposited manuscripts for various purposes or modify them for future research publications.
UCLA librarians are also available to answer questions about the policies; we can work with you individually or provide group training for your department. Contact the UCLA Open Access Policy team(opens in a new tab).
UC Publication Management System
To assist faculty covered by the Senate policy, in 2015 the UC Publication Management System began closely monitoring selected publication data sources to identify new journal articles by UCLA faculty authors. When it locates new articles, the system sends authors an email notification containing a link to the system, so authors can login, confirm authorship and submit manuscripts to eScholarship. This system is expected to expand to include all employees under the Presidential policy sometime in the future.
If you receive an email notification, the following notes may be useful:
- Use your UCLA Logon to log in to the publications management system linked in the email.
- After you log in, there’s a two-step process to follow. You will first need to confirm authorship of articles that seem to match your name and credentials. Then the system identifies which of those articles are covered by the policies, and provides a way to upload the manuscripts to complete the deposit.
- You can delegate management of your publications to someone else, such as departmental support staff. Click on the relevant link in the email for instructions.
- Contact the UCLA Open Access Policy team(opens in a new tab) if you have any trouble.