Chronicle of Higher Education
February 12, 2008
Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement
Harvard University's faculty this evening adopted a policy
that
requires faculty members to allow the university to make
their
scholarly articles available free online.
Peter Suber, an open-access activist with Public Knowledge,
a
nonprofit group in Washington, said on his blog that the new
policy makes Harvard the first university in the United
States to
mandate open access to its faculty members' research
publications.
Stuart M. Shieber, a professor of computer science at
Harvard,
who proposed the policy to the faculty, said after the vote
in a
news release that the decision "should be a very
powerful message
to the academic community that we want and should have more
control over how our work is used and disseminated."
The new policy will allow faculty members to request a
waiver,
but otherwise they must provide an electronic form of the
article
to the provost's office, which will place it in an online
repository.
The policy will allow Harvard authors to publish in any
journal
that permits posting online after publication. According to
Mr.
Suber, about two-thirds of pay-access journals allow such
posting
in online repositories. --Lila Guterman
copyright 2008 CHE
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