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Re: Harvard Faculty Adopts OA Requirement



I have googled to find the actual resolution that was voted on but to no avail though a lot of people seem to have commented. How do they know? There is mention of a waiver which is presumably an opt-out but if there is a mandate and a waiver is that not a recommended but not mandated arrangement. Scholars are encouraged to deposit but they may decide not to - or is this something different?

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy Thatcher" <sgt3@psu.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: Harvard Faculty Adopts OA Requirement

I'm confused: the last paragraph talks about Harvard authors publishing in
journals that permit posting online AFTER publication. But isn't the
Harvard policy to post authors' articles BEFORE publication in journals?
Do the Harvard faculty know exactly what it is they voted for?

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


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