Open Access Policy

Furthermore, the faculty recognizes that knowledge and understanding are gifts from God and are to be shared with others. Thus the faculty is committed to the broad dissemination of its scholarly works, and as a result adopts the following policy:

Each member of the faculty of Hope College grants to Hope College permission to make her or his scholarly work as defined below openly accessible in the College’s Institutional Repository.

The permission granted by each member of the faculty of Hope College is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, non-commercial, paid-up, worldwide license. Hope College is permitted to exercise any and all rights under United States copyright law related to the scholarly work designated above provided that (a) the works are neither sold for a profit nor used for any commercial purposes and (b) the faculty member has not formally designated that a specific scholarly work is not to be so disseminated. The permission also allows Hope College to authorize others to do the same.

This policy applies to all peer-reviewed, published scholarly journal articles and conference proceedings written while the author is a member of the faculty of Hope College and written after the formal adoption of this policy. Faculty members shall submit all such scholarly articles for addition to the College’s Institutional Repository. A faculty member may formally designate that a specific scholarly work is not to be disseminated by requesting a waiver. Reasons for doing so may include the existence of an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the existence of this policy or the reasonable potential for the author to expect to receive royalties for the work. However, faculty members may opt out of such dissemination of a scholarly work for any reason.

Details of How it Works

To assist the College in cataloging and distributing the published scholarship of its faculty, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article at no charge to the designated representative of Van Wylen Library in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the library. The article will be submitted no later than the date of its publication and will be embargoed until it has appeared either in print or online at the publisher’s website, whichever comes first. Van Wylen Library will make the works available to the public in an Institutional Repository.

The library representative will automatically waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written request by the author, explaining the need for the waiver. The license will be waived for a given article at any time upon request of the author stating the reason for the request after the bibliographic data for an article has been submitted.

The Library Committee, acting under the authority of the Academic Affairs Board, will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving any disputes related to its interpretation and application, and recommending changes in the policy, if needed, to the Academic Affairs Board. The Library Committee and Academic Affairs Board will review the policy after three years and present a report to the faculty. The faculty authorize the Dean of Libraries, working with the staff of the Hope College Libraries, to develop the Hope College Institutional Repository and to develop, initiate, and monitor a plan for adding scholarly works of the faculty, disseminating those works to the general public without cost, and communicating a formal acknowledgment to a faculty member when she or he designates that Hope College not disseminate a specific scholarly work.

Additional Information

Hope College faculty members are encouraged to consider Open Access journals when deciding where to submit their scholarly work for publication. If publication of scholarly work will occur in a non-Open Access journal, faculty members are encouraged to work with the publisher to retain a limited copyright of the scholarly work. Designated members of the Hope College Libraries will work with faculty members in this regard.

While this policy only covers peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings, in order to provide a complete record of the scholarly output at Hope College, faculty are strongly encouraged to provide bibliographical data and, where possible, the full text, of any other publication (such as chapters and essays in edited volumes, reference articles, non-peer-reviewed articles, and monographs, plays and creative performance), for inclusion in the Institutional Repository. The Repository will provide links to the final published versions of all publications whenever possible.

(Last revised January 2024.)