NEWS RELEASE— Librarians at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire McIntyre Library have committed to providing greater and more immediate access to scholarly research. By signing an Open Access Declaration, the library joins other academic libraries around the world in making more resources available to students and researchers.

According to John Pollitz, McIntyre Library director, open access removes barriers to information.

"Libraries across the country have seen their budgets squeezed by unsustainable inflation of journal prices. Resulting journal cancellations have hampered our ability to provide access to information that is the lifeblood of higher education," Pollitz said. "As librarians, we support the open access movement as a way to reverse this trend and expand access to scholarship."

Open access has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted and has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry and society as a whole, according to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. It expands access to scholarly information from all disciplines by making research available through such online repositories as arXiv and PubMed Central, as well as institutional repositories like Minds@UW, a digital collection of UW System research and scholarship. Through the Open Access Declaration, McIntyre Library faculty have committed to depositing their scholarship in Minds@UW or other appropriate repositories.

Many publishers allow authors to submit a preprint to an institutional or subject repository. Authors can often negotiate a publishing agreement, also known as a copyright transfer agreement, to make a version of their publication freely available in institutional repositories like Minds@UW or on their faculty webpage.

To build awareness at UW-Eau Claire, McIntyre Library will host a series of presentations and discussions during Open Access Week, Oct 24-28, regarding the implications of open access for scholarship and higher education. Faculty and students can learn more about their rights as authors and learn about the tools for open access publishing and research.

For more information about open access at UW-Eau Claire, contact John Pollitz, McIntyre Library director, at 715-836-4827 or pollitjh@uwec.edu or visit the McIntyre Library website for a complete schedule of Open Access Week activities.