Policies

The faculty and staff of Pratt Institute Libraries believe that Open Access to scholarship is critical for scholarly communication, the future of libraries more generally and advancing the library’s mission of providing outstanding service and access to a resource-rich environment that facilitates critical thinking, and creative teaching and learning in the Pratt community. The Libraries pledge to support and promote open access scholarship, resources, and services. In supporting the spread of knowledge outside of strict paywalls of traditional scholarly publishing structures, the Libraries commit to collecting robust Open Access resources as described in the Electronic Resources Evaluation Policy and Collection Development Policy. By promoting resources that are free and open access, the Libraries' further their commitment to advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility, as these resources will continue to be accessible to students after graduation, as well as being decoupled from traditional academic silos.

This pledge builds upon the Libraries’ practices/programs centering access to digital and digitized scholarly resources and services such as the collection of Pratt community records in its Archives, promotion of open educational resources, collection of theses and dissertations and future development of an institutional repository.

To learn more about Open Access and explore free online resources promoted by the Libraries please consult this dedicated research guide. A selection of Open Access resources are also available on the Database directory.

The Libraries encourages users to recommend open access resources for inclusion in the collection. To do this please reach out to eresources.library@pratt.edu with your suggestions.