SUNY Open Access Repository Launch: What is SOAR?

In 2018, the SUNY Chancellor issued a memorandum charging all SUNY campuses with the development of two items:

• An Open Access(OA) policy.
• A scholarly repository to store any works created under open access.

The combination of the OA policy and supporting repository looks to improve access to SUNY produced works. This increased access to SUNY-produced work serves to:

• Increase visibility and discoverability.
• Increase citation rates.
• Provide a persistent access point for works.
• Remove paywall barriers for users who want to reference SUNY works in their own research.
• Collect a representative collection of institutional research output.

Downstate adopted its open access policy in 2020 (OPT IN).

Open Access is being embraced - 63% of US faculty agree with the statement: “I would be happy to see the traditional subscription-based model replaced entirely with an open access publication system in which all scholarly research outputs would be freely available to the public.”

80% of journals allow some version of a paper to be deposited in an institutional repository.

SOAR, the SUNY Open Access Repository, was created in response to the Chancellor's charge of 2018. It is a SUNY-wide, centrally-managed resource. Its purpose is to allow the self-archiving of creative works by SUNY faculty, staff, and students.

Items deposited in the repository adhere to any embargo periods or licensing limitations from publishers. The repository contents are discoverable via internet search engines and Google Scholar. 

The Downstate Library is facilitating the archiving process for the campus.

Look at SUNY Upstate sample entry.  SUNY Upstate SOAR homepage.

Materials deposited in SOAR must adhere to the content guidelines established.

• Original creative and research-based scholarly works by faculty, staff, or students of SUNY Downstate will be accepted.
• Outside of embargo periods, all content will be publicly available.

• SUNY Downstate authors must own copyright to the materials submitted or have documented permission to deposit materials.

• If a work is co-authored, each co-author can grant a non-exclusive license by accepting the deposit agreement without permission of the other co-authors. However, it is recommended that the depositing SUNY Downstate author talk with their co-author colleagues prior to submitting the work to the SUNY Open Access Repository to avoid potential disagreements.

• A wide variety of content types can be deposited including published articles, post-prints, preprints, monographs, conference papers, dissertations, theses, honors projects, and creative works.

• Most file formats are accepted.

• Works produced by SUNY-affiliated students solely to fulfill course requirements are outside the scope of this repository.

• Open Educational Resources (OER) content will be outside the scope of this repository. 

• SUNY Open Access Repository administrators reserve the right to reject submissions that do not represent intellectual output from the SUNY community or cannot be accommodated due to size or format considerations.

For the full description of the content guidelines, see the SOAR site.

Datasets - We know that research data management is a hot topic right now. SOAR is not eligible to be a data repository due to it's current data structure and hosting limitations. SUNY may be investigating options but a shared service for data repository is currently not on the table. 

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you may have:

Gregg Headrick

gregg.headrick@downstate.edu