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American Association of Law Libraries |
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Special Committee on Open Access Applications for Legal Information |
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What is open access and why is it important to law librarians? “Open access” is commonly described as the free electronic publication of scholarly work. In the open access environment, the author retains most of the publication rights rather than a secondary publisher.
Distribution of the work is not constrained by copyright restrictions so long as the user of the open access publication gives proper attribution
Open access is becoming more important to legal scholars who want wider distribution of their work. They want to publish in commercial electronic repositories such as SSRN and BePress, as well as their own personal web pages and the web pages of their schools. These electronic postings may conflict with the licensing agreement that the author signed with the print journal that published the article. The result is that what is available electronically today could disappear tomorrow if the scholar does not have appropriate permission and the print publisher balks at electronic publication of the article.
We librarians seek to help people gain access to information, a task that is greatly enhanced in the open access environment. For those of us working with professors who publish articles, we have a responsibility to help educate them about open access issues so they can make informed decisions about where to publish and what copyright and licensing agreements to sign.
This page will provide a set of resources for librarians to education themselves and others on open access. Please feel to contact any of the committee members with questions or suggestions. |
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Paul George, Chair Richard Danner Anne Klinefelter George Pike Donna Scheeder Keith Ann Stiverson Claire Germain, Executive Board liaison |
