At their November 18, 2015 meeting, IUPUI Staff Council, an elected campus entity that, “represents the staff in the communication processes and decision making of the university. . .and promotes staff development and recommends policies which aid in retaining highly qualified personnel. . .” among many other activities, adopted an Open Access Statement of Support.
From the statement,
IUPUI is a community of scholars committed to disseminating and sharing the intellectual fruits of their research and scholarship. At IUPUI, the scholarly community includes staff, faculty, students, and community members. In recognition of their commitment to and participation in IUPUI’s research and teaching mission, and in an effort to enhance the wider recognition of staff scholarly contributions and impact, the IUPUI Staff Council encourages all IUPUI staff authors to: support a more sustainable and inclusive system of scholarship and to reduce information inequality; to employ technologies that can preserve copies of their works as part of the IUPUI record of scholarship for future study; and to use the services available at IUPUI to provide full-text online discoverability of their scholarly works.
As growing number of universities adopt Open Access Policies for faculty (see the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions), IUPUI becomes one of three institutions to recognize staff scholarly contributions through an official open access statement. While the policies at University of California and Columbia cover faculty, staff, and some students, IUPUI’s statement is unique in that it was entirely staff driven and adopted rather than administratively mandated. From IUPUI Staff Council President, Jim Klenner, “We saw this as a win, win. We not only get to participate in sharing knowledge as widely as possible but also have the opportunity to highlight the important scholarly work of IUPUI staff.”
The Staff statement complements the IUPUI Faculty Council Open Access Policy passed in October 2014. Visit the Open Access Works by Staff collection within IUPUI’s institutional repository, IUPUI ScholarWorks to see the growing collection of staff scholarship.