Open Access Coalition Formed by 22 Academic Institutions

The University of Kansas (KU), which in June 2009 became the first U.S. public university to adopt an open access (OA) policy regarding scholarly research in peer-reviewed journals, recently announced that it had spearheaded the formation of a 22-member Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI). The coalition includes Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The group formed during a July 19 teleconference call with representatives from the institutions, which KU Dean of Libraries Lorraine Haricombe had organized.

According to the announcement, COAPI will "collaborate and share [OA] implementation strategies," and advocate nationally for OA institutions. Advocacy will be aimed at bringing attention to OA and issues that could weaken OA policies, such as OA waivers required by some publishers, Haricombe told LJ.

Representatives from COAPI members will meet face-to-face for the first time at a pre-conference meeting at the Berlin 9 Open Access Conference in Washington, DC, in early November 2011. Haricombe said that she anticipates that COAPI will hold a panel there to address OA-related questions from conference attendees. She also expects that the group will meet again at the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resource Coalition's (SPARC) first North American OA meeting, to be held in Kansas City, MO, in March 2012.

The academic institutions (listed below) all have established their own faculty OA policies. KU's policy, revised last year, "asserts the rights of KU faculty to provide broad, free access to their journal publications to colleagues around the world," with the aim to "offer considerable improvement in the accessibility and citation of KU's published scholarship." The university grants access to these publications via its KU ScholarWorks online digital repository.

The following institutions are currently part of COAPI, according to the announcement:

• Arizona State University
• Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
• Columbia University
• Concordia University, Montréal, Québec
• Duke University, Durham, NC
• Emory University, Atlanta, GA
• Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, MN
• Harvard University
• Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
• Lafayette College, Easton , PA
• MIT
• Oberlin College, OH
• Oregon State University
• Rollins College, Winter Park, FL
• Stanford University
• Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
• University of Hawaii-Manoa
• University of Kansas
• University of North Texas
• University of Northern Colorado
• University of Oregon
• Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC
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