The IUPUI Open Access Policy: A Short Report on Implementation

The IUPUI Faculty Council adopted a rights retention, “opt out” open access policy about 18 months ago. Adopting a policy, however, was just an initial step toward honoring the campus's commitment to the broad and open dissemination of research and scholarship created by its authors. Building a culture of open access requires willing participants, technology, and dedicated effort from academic libraries. Here's a short summary of our implementation efforts to date and the current level of policy participation from faculty on the IUPUI campus.

How are we doing this?

Implementation Phase 1. In January 2015 the campus launched a policy portal designed by the University Library Center for Digital Scholarship. The site enables deposits, opt outs, and (for the very few publishers that request them) waivers for authors. Visit the site at: https://openaccess.indianapolis.iu.edu/.

After the site was launched, every faculty member received an email notifying them of the new open access policy and directing them to the portal for participation. To supplement the email message, every faculty member also received a postcard about the policy.

Implementation Phase 2. In addition to the announcement and the policy portal, the libraries began a more direct approach in the fall semester of 2015. Adapting methods developed at MIT and Rice, the libraries have implemented an identification-notification-deposit workflow for scholarly articles authored by IUPUI, IUSM, IU McKinney, and IUSD faculty members. The libraries search for articles, deposit a copyright-legal version (if one can be found), or contact one of the article's campus authors to request participation. Typically, the authors use the portal, send a manuscript, opt out, or (after two reminders) simply ignore the message.

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What are the outcomes?

By the end of March 2016, IUPUI deposited 1,401 articles in the Open Access Policy collection of IUPUI ScholarWorks. During the same time period, a Scopus affiliation search suggests that IUPUI authors wrote 3,286 articles--which gives us a 43% deposit rate. That puts IUPUI within range of its implementation models (MIT, 55%; Rice 46%).

As the IUPUI Open Access Policy collection continues to grow, we're looking forward to the increased readership and citation rates that our authors will receive. Already, articles from the collection have been downloaded more than 16,000 times and have had visitors from more than a 190 countries.

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As of March 31, 2016, the 10 most downloaded articles (from all schools and departments) include a range of scholarship--from public policy, dentistry, medicine, political science, and the scholarship of teaching and learning:

1. Sundt, J., Salisbury, E. J., & Harmon, M. G. (2016). Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect of California’s Realignment Act on Public Safety. Criminology & Public Policy. doi:10.1111/1745-9133.12199 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/7805 [926 Downloads]
2. Ludwig, K. H., Fontana, M., Vinson, L. A., Platt, J. A., & Dean, J. A. (2014). The success of stainless steel crowns placed with the Hall technique: A retrospective study. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 145(12), 1248–1253. doi:10.14219/jada.2014.89 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6159 [325 Downloads]
3. Sabri, O., Sabbagh, M. N., Seibyl, J., Barthel, H., Akatsu, H., Ouchi, Y., … Schulz-Schaeffer, W. J. (2015). Florbetaben PET imaging to detect amyloid beta plaques in Alzheimer’s disease: Phase 3 study. Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 11(8), 964–974. doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2015.02.004 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6631 [291 Downloads]
4. Liu, G. C., Hannon, T., Qi, R., Downs, S. M., & Marrero, D. G. (2015). The obesity epidemic in children: Latino children are disproportionately affected at younger ages. International Journal of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2(1), 12–18. doi:10.1016/j.ijpam.2015.03.004 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6535 [270 Downloads]
5. Ene, E., & Upton, T. A. (2014). Learner uptake of teacher electronic feedback in ESL composition. System, 46, 80–95. doi:10.1016/j.system.2014.07.011 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/5428 [239 Downloads]
6. Carter, D. L., & Carter, J. G. (2016). Effective Police Homicide Investigations Evidence From Seven Cities With High Clearance Rates. Homicide Studies, 20(2), 150–176. doi:10.1177/1088767915576996 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6160 [236 Downloads]
7. Bell, D. L., Rosenberger, J. G., & Ott, M. A. (2015). Masculinity in adolescent males’ early romantic and sexual heterosexual relationships. American Journal of Men’s Health, 9(3), 201–208. doi:10.1177/1557988314535623 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/8066 [217 Downloads]
8. Friesen, A., & Ksiazkiewicz, A. (2014). Do Political Attitudes and Religiosity Share a Genetic Path? Political Behavior, 37(4), 791–818. doi:10.1007/s11109-014-9291-3 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/5388 [205 Downloads]
9. Srinivasan, M., Blackburn, C., Mohamed, M., Sivagami, A. V., & Blum, J. (2015). Literature-Based Discovery of Salivary Biomarkers for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Biomarker Insights, 2015(10), 39–45. doi:10.4137/BMI.S22177 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6439 [191 Downloads]
10. Pelus, L., Hoggatt, J., & Tate, T. (2015). Role of lipegfilgrastim in the management of chemotherapy-induced neutropenia. International Journal of Nanomedicine, 2647. doi:10.2147/IJN.S55796 | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6577 [173 Downloads]

We're proud of the progress of the IUPUI Open Access policy, excited to see that a world of readers is seeking access to our scholarship, and looking forward to the day that the majority of IUPUI articles and free to read, anywhere, anytime.

- Jere Odell