Harvard Faculty Adopts OA Requirement

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

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