Professor Kelsey Kauffman has made efforts to educate DePauw faculty and staff about open-access policies for the past year. But it wasn't until internationally renowned computer genius Aaron Swartz committed suicide on Jan. 11 that the university began to seriously consider adopting such a policy.
In light of Swartz's death, DePauw officials are contemplating adopting an open-access policy, which would give faculty the opportunity to submit their scholarly articles through a DePauw database. These articles would be available for free to anyone in the world - not limited to only students, professors and employees tied to institutions with subscriptions to academic journals, as they currently are.
The Man behind the Plan
Kauffman, a part-time assistant professor of university studies, had a personal tie to Swartz. Her daughter, Taren Kauffman-Stinebrickner, had been dating Swartz for 20 months when she found him dead in their Brooklyn apartment on Jan. 11. Swartz had committed suicide.
DePauw community members who paid attention to the news over Winter Term might recall Swartz name in major news media outlets at the time of the incident.
Swartz was only 26 years old at the time of his death, but he was recognized as a man who had drastically shaped the Internet. As a teen, he helped develop RSS, a tool that allows Internet users to organize information they want to see on the Internet into a stream. At 19 years old, he co-founded Reddit, one of the world's most popular social news sites.
But Swartz wasn't just a computer nerd. He was also an advocate for the freedom of information through technology. One of his political endeavors included leading an effective campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have legalized Internet censorship.
His passion for the freedom of information is what got him in trouble with the federal government. In 2009, he was arrested for allegedly downloading and publicizing nearly 5 million documents from publisher JSTOR's database by hacking into computer servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Swartz gave back any JSTOR data he had, and the publisher did not press charges against him. JSTOR has included a public condolence to Swartz on its website.
"The case is one that we ourselves had regretted being drawn into from the outset, since JSTOR's mission is to foster widespread access to the world's body of scholarly knowledge," the JSTOR website reads. "At the same time, as one of the largest archives of scholarly literature in the world, we must be careful stewards of the information entrusted to us by the owners and creators of that content."
At the time of his suicide, Swartz faced a federal trial in April - one that would cost him 35 years behind bars if he was found guilty.
Kauffman helped Swartz with his case by giving him advice about the criminal justice system, her area of expertise. She had met Swartz several times, including when he spent Christmas in Greencastle with the family.
"He was just a wonderful person," Kauffman said. "And gentle and kind and interesting and incredibly smart and accommodating. You know, just a really great person to be around."
Six days after Swartz's death, Kauffman sent an email to the DePauw faculty in a plea to carry on Swartz's legacy.
Her first request: "Support the adoption of an open-access policy by DePauw faculty and DePauw University."
Her email continued: "Aaron believed passionately that information-especially scholarly information-should be freely available to all people on this planet, not just privileged individuals like us who have the institutional ties or individual wealth necessary to access it."
Current use of academic journals
DePauw students and faculty use academic journals everyday in some capacity or another, whether it is downloading them as sources for a research paper or accessing them on Moodle for class discussions. But they wouldn't have access to these articles if the university didn't pay a substantial amount of money for them.
Roy O. West Library spends about $850,000 of their $1 million operating budget in order for DePauw students and faculty to have free access to electronic academic journals the university subscribes to, according to Rick Provine, director of libraries. The library staff chooses which journals to buy based on the university's curriculum, as well as faculty and students' research requests.
But that means that DePauw also pays for scholarly journals produced by the university's own faculty. Provine explained how the current system works.
Many DePauw professors write scholarly articles in order to expand research in their field, add a publication to their resumes, and oftentimes, be eligible for promotion or tenure. These professors then give their articles to publishers, usually without compensation. The publishers then aggregate the articles into a journal, which is sold to the university.
"The big journal publishers make tremendous profit margins, and we're the ones paying the price for that," Provine said.
For example, publisher Elsevier made a profit margin of 36% in 2010, according to an article in The Economist.
Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, associate professor of communication and theatre, has published four scholarly articles in three different journals.
"The irony is, if I wanted to use those in class, I kind of have to pay for that," Nichols-Pethick said. "Or someone's got to pay for it, either the university or the students."
Nichols-Pethick is also chair of the library advisory committee that will work to draft an open-access policy for DePauw. He explained that contributing to an open-access journal allows authors to claim their copyright, which they ultimately give up when submitting their articles to a journal that isn't open-access.
"What this really means [for faculty] is, this is an opportunity for you to have more control over the work you produce," Nichols-Pethick said.
If DePauw were to instate an open-access policy, it would be one of over 40 collegiate institutions that have already done so, including state schools such as Purdue University, Ivy League universities such as Harvard University and liberal arts institutions such as Hope College.
What would an open-access policy at DePauw look like?
An open-access policy at DePauw would allow DePauw professors to electronically submit their journals in a digital repository, giving free access to anyone in the world wishing to view the article.
"An open-access policy says: giving all of our intellectual property to journal publishers, we realize is not going to benefit us in the long run," Provine said.
If DePauw were to develop an open-access policy, faculty would be advised to publish in peer-reviewed open-access journals.
"We encourage you to retain your intellectual property rather than hand it over to a publisher," Provine said. "And not only that, but we'll give you a place to publish it, which is on our server."
But if the journal they wish to publish in isn't open-access, they still have options. Provine would suggest that they consider amending their contracts with publishers. With this request, the article would only be accessible in the journal for one year. But after that year, the faculty member who wrote the article would be permitting to submit it to the DePauw repository.
If the university decides to adopt an open-access policy, faculty members won't have to use it. If they would like to continue to have their work published in non-open-access journals, they could continue to do so by simply checking an opt-out box.
According to Nichols-Pethick, the system DePauw is interested in implementing closely aligns with the policy established by Hope, since the colleges' academic standards and student life are similar.
Kelly Jacobsma, library director at Hope College, explained why the institution supported this policy.
"I think from an institution like Hope, and perhaps DePauw, our mission is to contribute to the body of knowledge in our disciplines," Jacobsma said. "We kind of have this commitment to the common good, and scholarship cannot advance at the same right if people cannot have access to the scholarship."
Hope adopted its policy one year ago and implemented it last October. To put their repository in operation, they bought a software license called Digital Commons, which organizes the faculty's journal articles into the Hope open-access system.
Dave Stout, sales director at Be Press, an open access scholarly publishing service, said that a yearly subscription for a digital repository for a small liberal arts college could range from $10,000 to $25,000, depending on the company the university is purchasing from.
Provine believes that if many other institutions begin to support open-access policies, DePauw would save money in the long run.
"It would not be a one-to-one dollar savings, but I think the more institutions that do this, the more faculty that get aware of that, the less
universities as a whole will spend on buying back our intellectual property form publishers," Provine said. "And that will benefit us all down the line."
Up next: faculty response
At Hope, it took about a year and a half of discussion before faculty approved the open access policy, Jacobsma said.
"It was a process because it takes some time to learn, understand what open access policies are and how they work," Jacobsma said. "The learning curve for faculty might not be as steep now because it's been more in the news and faculty are more aware of the concept of open access."
Nichols-Pethick said the library advisory committee plans to announce at the upcoming faculty meeting on Monday that they are in the process of discussing and researching open-access policies.
If all goes well, Nichols-Pethick expects a framework of information about what open-access policies are to be formulated by the end of the year in an effort to answer faculty members' questions. At the earliest, the open-access policy could be approved at the end of the fall semester.
In order for an open-access policy to commence at DePauw, the faculty would have to vote in favor of it.
Provine isn't expecting much disapproval by the faculty.
"I think ultimately once everyone understands what all the implications are and the importance of this, that I wouldn't anticipate people would want to vote against it," Provine said.
Provine noted that small disparities could arise with people who are concerned about changing processes or want to amend the policy.
After Kauffman sent her email to faculty in January, she said she was initially disappointed because she didn't receive much of a response. However, she noted that students who she sent the email to responded positively.
"Once I realized how the system worked, I was appalled," Kauffman said. "And it seemed obvious that DePauw ought to join other universities, and the sooner the better so that we'd be ahead of the curve rather than behind."
