The Library pursues collections investments that further our mission to partner in learning and collaborate in discovery, as articulated in our Strategic Plan. To make those investments sustainable, we have to look at their long-term impact across two axes: financial and structural.
Our commitment to financial sustainability will drive our actions to favor investments where price and value are aligned and where projected growth in cost is consistent with our mission to maintain a deep, balanced, diverse collection that supports the full range of research interests at the University. We will work to reduce our commitment to resources whose cost is untethered from the value added by the vendor, especially where the growth of those costs threatens to crowd out other important investments. Business models that exploit well-known dysfunctions in the academic marketplace will be especially disfavored, while those that foster a healthy publishing ecosystem will be favored.
Our commitment to structural sustainability will drive our actions to favor investments that demonstrate alignment with the Library's mission and that of the University, including:
Access
Sustainable investments increase public access to research, maximizing its impact in service of the public good. Products and services that create artificial scarcity in order to appropriate the value of research for the vendor's benefit do not facilitate access.
Reuse
Sustainable investments foster reuse of research outputs in new projects, and avoid proprietary formats and restrictive licenses.
Authors' Rights
Sustainable investments respect authors' and other contributors' rights and interests in their research, including the right to share them widely. Unsustainable practices include appropriation of academic labor and restrictions on author and contributor rights.
Justice
Sustainable investments counter racism, sexism, and other systemic biases in the research ecosystem and in the broader culture.
Reproducibility
Sustainable investments ensure published research can be replicated in order to confirm results. Products and services that promulgate research that is not reproducible are unsustainable.
Quality
Sustainable investments improve the quality and reliability of research.
Fairness
Sustainable investments ensure transparent and equitable evaluation of research.
In addition to making individual investments consistent with these values, the Library will adopt policies that promote them, such as our policy against non-disclosure clauses.