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Open Access of Scholarly Publications Policy

Collection development policy for resources that freely available.

Open Access (OA) Resources Availability

The Library routinely adds relevant OA content to its collections.  These materials can be found using CL's online tools as described below.

Resources Via QuickSearch and Other Online Tools

Many OA resources can be found using the discovery service, QuickSearch. The Collection Development Department manages the knowledge database so that the freely accessible collections of journal articles, ebooks, and other types of information are retrievable through QuickSearch well as through the A-Z lists of Database and Ebooks. 

Scores of academic libraries maintain institutional repositories (IR) that house their universities' OA publications.  These repositories can be searched by using the “add results beyond your library’s collection” feature in QuickSearch, or by searching Google Scholar.

CL actively participates in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) that provides access to freely available resources from the U.S. Government Publishing Office.  These resources are available through QuickSearch.

Archival OA resources can also be found through QuickSearch or by searching the Archives and Special Collections site.

Author Fees

At some universities the library will have oversight of a program known as Open Access Author Fees, where the library pays the fee to the publisher so the work authored by a faculty member or employee can be published as OA. Unfortunately, CL cannot afford to pay author fees for those who want to publish their work as OA.  A common practice is for a faculty member to write these fees into a grant application.

Open Educational Resources

Videos and Images

More details on finding and using images and videos.

Searching for OA in QuickSearch

Perform your search in QuickSearch. Click on "open access" under "refine your search."  To expand the search results beyond CL's collection, click on "add results beyond your library's collection" located just above the results listing.  The sum of these steps will produce results that are freely available.