Western’s community of scholars is committed to creating, disseminating, and applying knowledge for the benefit of society through excellence in teaching, research, and scholarship. Western University is committed to the democratization of knowledge through open access and recognizes that open research and open scholarship practices foster collaborative, community engaged, reproducible, and impactful scholarship. Freely sharing research with the public reflects Western’s responsibility and commitment to return research outputs to the public as a publicly funded institution.
Furthermore, it is our belief that academics should be empowered to take an assertive stance with regards to the ownership of their intellectual output. The commercial publishing industry has long required ownership of academic copyrights, and this policy is a step in imagining a new direction for scholarly publishing.
If you have questions about protecting your intellectual property when you publish, if you would like help in negotiating a publishing contract, or if you have any other questions about open access publishing, please email the Western Libraries Research and Scholarly Communications team.
Last Updated: Nov 19, 2021 Views: 16
