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Faculty Hear Open Access Policy Progress Report

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A draft open access policy regarding peer-reviewed, scholarly research published by faculty at Tech is ready for input from faculty, according to a progress report given during the April 24 meeting of the General Faculty and Academic Senate.      

In her presentation, Ellen Zegura, co-chair of the subcommittee on open access and a professor in the School of Computer Science, explained that many of Georgia Tech’s peer institutions, including Duke and Princeton, already have such policies in place.

“An open access policy would allow faculty members to retain some copyrights to their research publications and have the option to place them in the SMARTech repository — which is accessible to anyone in the world,” Zegura said. “Faculty members could opt out if they weren’t interested in participating. But those who did would benefit, since some journals only allow for open access if the faculty member’s institution has an official policy.”

Zegura and the other subcommittee members are eager to get feedback from the campus community and will hold a series of town halls (further information about the town halls and open access will be in a future issue of The Whistle). For more information about the policy, email Zegura or co-chair Steve McLaughlin.    

In other meeting news:

  • Changes to the Institute’s Conflict of Interest and Outside Professional Activity Policy were approved to comply with recent changes to the Public Health Service regulations on Responsibility of Applicants for Promoting Objectivity in Research. The changes relate to the definition of significant financial interest, extent of investigator disclosure, investigator training and reporting of reimbursed or sponsored travel.  
  • Following discussion at the Feb. 21 meeting, the committee charged with revising the Freshman Admission Statement was asked to alter the new statement so that students would not be required to “provide substantial evidence” of their potential to “embrace the diverse campus community.” In the revised version, which was approved, the wording requiring students to provide evidence has been removed.  
  • Per discussion at the Feb. 21 meeting, the committee charged with developing an official statement regarding excused absences during final exams was asked to reword its proposed statement to provide more flexibility. In the revised version, which was approved, there is a stipulation that the Student Academic and Financial Affairs Committee may be petitioned to grant exceptions.  
  • The newly elected Student Government Association presidents and vice presidents were introduced: Eran Mordel and Amit Khanduri are undergraduate president and executive vice president, and Michael Kirka and Gareth Guvanasen are graduate president and executive vice president.

To view the agenda for this meeting and the supporting documents for each agenda item, click here.

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Amelia Pavlik
  • Created:04/30/2012
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016