Open Access Policy
Policy Summary
The George Washington University ("GW" or "university") seeks to disseminate research and scholarship being conducted by members of its community as widely as possible.
Upon identifying eligible scholarly articles, University Libraries will inform an Author (defined below) that their work is subject to this policy and will request the Author provide a suitable electronic copy of the scholarly article be made available at no charge. Any Author who wants to opt out of having their work accessed through an Institutional Repository will be given the opportunity to complete a Waiver Request Form.
Related Regulations
In some cases, federal funding agencies require the results of taxpayer-funded research be made freely available.
Who is Governed by this Policy
- Faculty
- Librarians
- Postdocs
Policy
Each faculty member, librarian, and Postdoc (collectively, “Author”) will grant the university a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to archive and make freely available each of their scholarly articles, in any medium, to foster a culture of Open Access.
The policy will apply to all scholarly articles written while the Author is employed by the university, except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Author entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy.
Upon identifying eligible scholarly articles, University Libraries will inform the Author that their work is subject to this policy and will request the Author provide a suitable final or near-final (post-print, post-peer-review, or the version of record) electronic copy of the article, which will be made available to the University Libraries (Gelman Library, the Jacob Burns Law Library, and the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library as applicable) at no charge. The University Libraries will make the scholarly article available to the public in a permanent and freely accessible Institutional Repository, subject to a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license. Any Author who does not want their scholarly article accessed through an Institutional Repository will be given the opportunity to complete a Waiver Request Form and opt out from having the scholarly article accessible. After giving a reasonable notice, if University Libraries does not receive a response with the Author’s electronic scholarly article or the Waiver Request Form, University Libraries will ingest the most appropriate version of the scholarly article it is able to access. In the event University Libraries ingests a scholarly work after not receiving a response from the Author, a subsequent notice will be sent to the Author informing them of where they can access their work in the Institutional Repository.
The University Libraries, in consultation with the Faculty Senate’s Libraries Committee, will be responsible for ensuring policy compliance, maintaining and updating procedures, and for recommending changes to this policy
Definitions
Institutional Repository: A digital archive of the intellectual product created by the faculty, research staff, and students of an institution and accessible to end users both within and outside of the institution.
Open Access: Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results and ideas to impact knowledge and grow ideas.
Procedures
Using Health Sciences Research Commons
Using Scholarly Commons in the Jacob Burns Law Library
Requesting a Waiver to the Open Access Policy
Related Information
Contacts
| Contact | Phone Number | Email Address |
|---|---|---|
| University Libraries | schol_comm gwu [dot] edu (schol_comm[at]gwu[dot]edu) |
Responsible University Official: Dean of Libraries and Academic Innovation, Director of the Jacob Burns Law Library, and Director of the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library
Responsible Office(s): University Libraries
Origination Date: February 17, 2026
Last Material Change: N/A
Last GW Community Comment Period: November 14, 2025 - January 8, 2026; see a thematic summary of feedback here.
Next Scheduled Review: 2027-2028 Academic Year
To provide feedback on this policy, please contact the Responsible Office(s) listed above or the Office of Ethics, Compliance, and Risk. More information describing university policies is outlined in the University Policy Principles.
Noncompliance with this policy can be reported through this website.