As a librarian or administrator at George Mason, you have a right to be able to provide students and faculty access to all of the research and journal articles they need in order to conduct their own research. But the increasing price of journal subscriptions--particularly in science, technology, and medicine, some of which cost more than $20,000 per year1--prevents universities from providing their faculty and students with unlimited access to academic materials. Open Access changes this closed, subsciption access model, which is becoming unsustainable, by opening high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarly research not just to the Mason community, but to the entire world--online, for free. OA saves universities money and promotes the sharing of knowledge for the public good.

Open Access can also increase the visibility and maximize the impact of research conducted at Mason every year. By encouraging faculty to publish their work in OA Journals and deposit their articles in MARS, as well as encouraging graduate students to publish their theses and dissertations electronically through UDTS, you can help better promote the high quality of scholarship that is a Mason tradition. By broadening the potential readership of Mason's scholarly publications, OA can increase the frequency of Mason research being cited by other researchers and more efficiently disseminates Mason's scholarship throughout the world.

To help promote OA at Mason, consider adopting policies requiring faculty to deposit their articles in our institutional archive and graduate students to publish their work electronically, or making Mason publications Open Access. Talk to the university's faculty and students to help raise greater awareness and encourage continued development of Mason's OA iniatives. Use the links below to learn more about OA and explore additional resources. 

Resources

• Read a brief overview of what you can do as a university administrator² to support Open Access
• Read a brief overview of what you can do as a librarian³ to support Open Access
• Learn more about initiatives that other universities have taken to support Open Access
• Get more information about the Mason Archival Repository Service (MARS)
• Learn more about Mason's University Dissertation and Thesis Services (UDTS)
• Browse the DOAJ's 4,000 peer-reviewed OA journals to find journals in your field or area of interest
• Learn more about the sponsoring organizations of Open Access Week and explore their websites for more information 
• Additional suggested reading

1. As cited in SPARC's "Right to Research" Brochure, 2008. http://www.righttoresearch.org/. 

2 and 3. PDF documents taken from Open Access Week's downloadable resources:  http://www.openaccessweek.org/downloadable-resources-english/.