Hello all: 

Our library's Schol Comm team just had an interesting conversation.  We're re-starting campus-wide conversations about open access, with the hope of ending up with an Open Access Policy that (a) clarifies campus support for OA and (b) makes it legally and functionally easier for faculty to deposit their Author Approved Manuscripts in our institutional repository. (And yes, we're behind the OA times compared to many other US universities)

A marketing question came up about the term "open access".  There's concerns about residual anti-OA baggage on our campus and also the growing global conflation of the term OA with the troubles of APCs. Might it be better if we ditched the "open access" term? Instead we could follow the federal agencies path of using "public access" in our campus campaign for an OA policy?  (If it's of help to your response, we're a large R1 land grant university located in a politically conservative state with lots of federal funding   - many of our faculty already are / will soon be familiar with the terms used by the federal funding agency grants).

Are there any foreseeable downsides in rebranding our campaign towards a "Public Access Policy"? Does it matter if we're out of step with the nomenclature on other campuses?

I look forward to your thoughts,

Megan

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Megan Bean, J.D. (she/her)
Assistant Professor of Practice, Copyright & Information Policy Specialist
Mississippi State University Libraries
2310 Mitchell Memorial Library
P.O. Box 5408  / Mail Stop 9570
662-325-4619 ; [log in to unmask]

Here to provide information, never legal advice.

Booking page for individual appointments:
 https://msstate.libcal.com/appointments/msulibraries?g=24542

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