Penn State's open access policy, AC02, applies to university researchers at Penn State.

Articles coauthored with one or more Penn State colleagues

The open access policy applies to all Penn State university researchers who are coauthors. If any one of the coauthors makes the article open, all coauthors are in compliance with the policy. Similarly, if any one of the coauthors waives the policy as to that article, all coauthors are in compliance with the policy, and none of the coauthors will be asked to make the work open.

We periodically send reminder emails about the open access policy. Because we send researchers no more than one email every six months, your coauthors may not receive reminder emails when you do.

If you or your coauthor has waived the open access policy for your article, you can still make it open, potentially subject to an embargo required by the publisher. Please contact the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright with questions.

Articles coauthored with external colleagues only

If you are the only Penn State university researcher who is an author on an article, the open access policy requires that you either make the article open or get a waiver. If your article is published open access or is available in an open access repository (such as a repository at a coauthor's institution), the Researcher Metadata Database should detect this and not ask you to make it open.