The OU Faculty Senate’s Monday meeting featured the University Libraries Committee's Scholarly Communication Taskforce request for institutional open access policies and introduced the new executive director of governmental affairs for OU.
The senate approved the senate chair report, which included the Faculty Senate Executive Committee’s welcoming of Hollye Hunt, the enterprise-wide executive director of governmental affairs for OU, replacing former OU Government Affairs Executive Director John Woods, who resigned from the position after a sexual assault allegation which resulted in an emergency protective order.
Although Hunt was not able to join the meeting, Senate Chair Keri Kornelson said they will try again in April to bring her in to discuss her position.
“I think it'll be really interesting for you all to meet her because she's the person who represents OU to the Oklahoma legislature, and she has a really great take on how that interaction works,” Kornelson said.
A university press release read Hunt currently serves as OU Health’s vice president of external affairs, where she manages legislative advocacy efforts. Her new role combines with her current one and ultimately consolidates OU and OU Health’s governmental affairs.
The senate chair report said Hunt discussed possible appropriations to higher education for the upcoming year. The state budget has more funds, so they are hopeful the spending coming to higher education will go up.
During the meeting, the senate also discussed the University Libraries Committee's Scholarly Communication Taskforce. Senators Lee Fithian, Mike Bemben and Claude Miller presented the task force’s request for an “open and sustainable system of scholarly communication for OU.”
“Taskforce members respectfully request that the OU Faculty Senate Executive Committee establish an ad hoc committee to review the institutional open access policies identified in the task force report so that an institutional open access policy may be crafted for us here at OU,” Miller said. “We would also ask that procedural processes and structural recommendations in support of such a policy be made available for consideration by the faculty senate during the 2020-23 academic year.”
Task force member Karen Rupp-Serrano said if an institutional open access policy is passed by the faculty senate next year, the ad hoc committee would draft the open access policy which gives individuals the right to put the post-print — or the manuscript that has been reviewed and edited — into ShareOk, the joint institutional repository for the University of Oklahoma Libraries, without publisher approval.
“People at another institution who do not have access to that (publisher’s) journal because their institution can't afford it — they will be able to read a version of your work that is most likely very similar to the final published version, and they decide they want to cite it, then most likely, they will either make a request through their institution's interlibrary loan department to get the publisher's final version to cite in their work, or they will purchase a copy themselves,” Rupp-Serrano said. “It means that many more readers have access to your work anytime and hopefully that drives your citations.”
Miller also said that the policy will not force individuals to put their work in open access and they may “opt-out” if they so desire.
“The task force has ideas, and we certainly hope that task force members will be appointed to the ad hoc committee so we have some continuity between their work and the ad hoc,” Rupp-Serrano said. “That's one of the things that will be addressed is how is the best way for us to collect those post-prints and make them available if you give permission for them to be made available.”
Following the land statement and approval of the senate journal for the Feb. 14 session, Kornelson announced faculty interested in running for at-large member on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee should contact Chair-elect Dave Hambright by April 1.
Kornelson also announced the death of retired faculty member Joan Wadlow, provost of Norman Campus from 1986-91 and political science professor on Dec. 8, 2021, and Jean-Claud Roegiers, professor in petroleum and geological engineering, on Feb. 8, 2022.
During the meeting, the senate also approved changes to the Faculty Awards and Honors Council, which namely included removing the task of managing sabbatical applications from their charter.
Finally, candidates for chair-elect and secretary of the Faculty Senate were announced by Hambright and will be voted on in the April 11 meeting. Chair-elect candidates include Hunter Heyck, professor of history of science, technology, and medicine, and Matthias ‘Ulli’ Nollert, associate professor of chemical, biological, and materials engineering. Secretary candidates include Susan Hahn and Sarah Robbins, associate professors in university libraries.
