Earlier this week, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition (SPARC) and Science Commons released their advice on implementing Open Access through their Open Doors and Open Minds white paper.

The paper is billed as a how-to guide on formulating an institutional license grant and the best way in getting which OA policy up and running at an institution.   

I’ve had a quick read through; it’s written well with some useful advice and things to consider. At a dozen pages in length, it’s worth a look if only to familiarise yourself with current OA developments.

The paper has a good stab at the reasons behind Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science adopting their landmark OA policy. The paper suggests what action in academia can and should be taken. Advocates (of OA) and educators (to colleagues and administrations) are what is needed goes the argument. Librarians will usually be the engine managing resources so scholarly articles get deposited online, say the authors.

Of the three case scenarios outlined, each examines the different licence grants for consideration. The paper (press release to be exact) breaks these down as follows:

Three different licenses, which are granted to the institution by the author, are offered for consideration:

Case 1. Broad license grant - a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise all of the author's exclusive rights under copyright, including the right to grant sublicenses.

Case 2. Intermediate license grant - involves license restrictions that modify the scope of the license grant in Case 1.

Case 3. Narrow license grant - grants to the university only the right to deposit the article in the institutional repository, and to make it available through the repository Web site.

The paper also recommends mandatory deposit of articles in institutional repositories. Mandatory deposit may be adopted regardless of the licensing policy chosen.

All of this is particularly useful if you are considering taking similar steps in your institution...