Supporting Proposal for RGPEC Charge on Publications Repository
Submitted by Gayle Stein, RGPEC Co-chair
October 2011

Charge: Examine the possibility of a Rutgers-specific, centrally-driven publication repository for published papers and books. Provide data about similar services at peer and aspirant universities.

Background: Traditionally, faculty members give away rights to their research publications to the journals in which they publish. This model is limiting in that research results are not widely available to those without costly journal subscriptions. Because of this, publications that are openly available are cited more frequently than those that require a password. Funding agencies, such as the NIH, are requiring funded researchers to put copies of their research in PubMed, a publically available database.

Universities such as Harvard, Princeton, UC-Berkley, and Michigan have policies in place that assist faculty in obtaining royalty-free, non-exclusive rights to their work. Although this applies primarily to journal articles, electronic copies of books are also included.

When faculty are given the option of putting copies of their research papers in Rutgers’ centralized repository, RUCore, about one-tenth of one percent do so. However, at universities where the libraries automatically archive papers, about 99% of papers are collected.

By retaining royalty-free, non-exclusive rights to their research, faculty members can create their own research repositories and departments can collect faculty research in one place.

Many faculty are concerned about the public model, fearing that top-tier journals will stop accepting their papers. Rutgers needs to look at how other universities are addressing this and whether the faculty fears are warranted.