Open Access in Libraries & Cultural Resources

May 1, 2009

The Academic Council of Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary has adopted a mandate to deposit their scholarly output in Dspace, the University’s open access scholarly repository. The repository has been in place since March 2003 and currently provides access to a broad range of scholarly output, including a growing collection of full text university theses.

Members of the Council, comprised of archivists, curators, and librarians, have long supported open access through promotions on campus such as Open Access Day, membership in SPARC and Canadian Association of Research Libraries, support for online open access journals published through the University of Calgary Press, and an active program of introducing the repository to faculty and graduate students. Libraries and Cultural Resources also funds the $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund to assist researchers to publish in open access journals.

The text of the mandate is:

"As an active member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary endorses the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing and the Berlin Declaration.

LCR academic staff members believe that the output of our scholarly activities should be as widely disseminated and openly available as possible. Our scholarly output includes but is not limited to journal articles, books and book chapters, presentations if substantial, conference papers and proceedings, and datasets.

Effective April 17, 2009, LCR academic staff commit to

• Deposit their scholarly output in the University of Calgary’s open access scholarly repository
• Promote Open Access on campus and assist scholars in making their research openly available
• Where possible, publish their research in an open-access journal"

More information about the institutional repository

LCR draft submission guidelines (PDF)

For further questions or comments, please contact:

Andrew Waller Serials Librarian Collections and Technical Services Libraries and Cultural Resources MLB 402B waller@ucalgary.ca (403) 220-8133 voice (403) 284-2109 fax

Mary Westell Associate University Librarian for Information Technology and Scholarly Communications Libraries and Cultural Resources MLT 215 westell@ucalgary.ca (403) 220-3764 voice (403) 282-1218 fax