Slashdot Mirror
Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement
Vooch writes "Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy this evening that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online." I may not be smart enough to go to college, but at least I can pretend to have a Harvard eduction. I don't think that will be enough to get a gig as a Simpsons writer.
A Harvard eduction?? Some of us learn english proper!
Considering Harvard University's staggering $34 billion stockpile...
I may not be smart enough to go to college, but at least I can pretend to have a Harvard eduction. I don't think that will be enough to get a gig as a Simpsons writer.
You mean Springfield's Springfield Alderman Simpson?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Ok, that's fine and well that if the journal allows it, Harvard makes a copy of the article freely available. What about those journals (Nature and Science, maybe?) that do not allow this. Does this mean that Harvard faculty will not publish in Nature and Science? Somehow I doubt that. Does this mean that Harvard will break copyright agreements? Maybe? The article doesn't quite say.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
One of my major frustrations is how it's very difficult to find serious scholarship outside of a certain number of journals, all of which require expensive subscriptions. It severely limits my ability to make a point on, say, evolutionary biology if I cannot cite and link to a peer-reviewed paper on said subject.
Hopefully, we'll be able to see some more of this sort of thing in the future.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
"...but at least I can pretend to have a Harvard eduction."
As opposed to a Harvard induction?
iTunes U has a bit of a lead, me thinks.
I think their theory is that journals that don't allow this will have to change their policy, as they wouldn't want to lose out on publishing articles from Harvard profs.
http://www.mhall119.com
I was all set to make a snide comment about the esteemed Mr. Taco's spelling and/or typing abilities, perhaps combined with a Billy Gates Harvard dropout reference, but then I Googled "eduction":
Eduction
*Sigh* I am NOT smarter than a fifth grader.
I study criminology and a large portion of studies that are found in scholarly journals are funded by government grants. A stipulation to getting that grant money is that the study is offered online for free. What often happens is that the same author writes two papers using the same data. The two papers will be about the same study, will arrive at the same conclusion, but the paper offered for free simply doesn't state that it is peer reviewed.
As opposed to being inducted, subjected, injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected for the school-for-learning-to-talk-through-your-teeth?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
My understanding of this system is that it's opt-out rather than opt-in. Faculty members retain the copyright to their papers if they're included in the archive, and they have to right to remove them from the archive (opting out). Publishing to many (most?) journals entails signing over the copyright of the final form of the paper to the journal.
It seems entirely conceivable that some journals will require Harvard profs to remove the article from the archive as a condition for publication. On the other hand, in some fields it's common for "working paper" versions of a paper to circulate widely before they are officially published. Official publication does not usually entail the removal of these working paper versions. I suspect that this is part logistical (it's hard to revoke something that's been made available free on the web), part non-competing (the final version of the paper tends to be more polished and you'll almost certainly prefer citing it over the working paper version), and part publicity (it's easy to find working papers, and if you really like it you'll seek out the published version, serving as advertising).
So basically, this archive can serve as a working paper repository for Harvard profs. They don't need to put it up on their own web page or have a website in their field dedicated to it, so hopefully this will make it even more convenient to have research available freely on the web.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
What about those journals (Nature and Science, maybe?) that do not allow this.
They'll just have to change their policy. I'm sure this is really what this whole policy is about. If enough research institutions make this a policy, the journals which have had so much control over controlling publication will have no other choice.
AccountKiller
Reading this material no more makes one a Harvard grad than reading Einstein's works makes one an expert at Physics; the good news is that I read through the material and it didn't not make me any more dumber.
stuff |
Harvard isn't doing this out of the good of their own hearts. It's a federal mandate. One example is the NIH policy that now requires all articles produced from work funded by NIH to be available on-line to the public, free, within one year of publication. There's an article on it , the second one down on the top stories. Key line: "In accordance with federal law, the NIH now requires the submission of published articles resulting from NIH-funded research to PubMed Central." (emphasis mine) Journal copyright models are going to have to change, because to comply with the law, people will only be able to publish where they can then make the article public.
Not fair! I paid 40k a year to get an education and exclude people in the process!
Current State: Pirates > Cowboys + Ninjas + Robots Yarrrr
Does this mean that Harvard will break copyright agreements? According to TFA: So evidently they will make it possible for authors to publish in more restrictive journals if necessary. But the overall push towards open access is clear.
My guess is that within a few more years, all the journals will be preprint-friendly. After all, the journals need the authors more than the authors need them. Any journal that refuses to allow these kinds of policies will find it difficult to attract high-profile publications in coming years.
Now how about an *open format* mandate to go with that?
Somehow, I think Science and Nature aren't that worried. If you count the percent of articles published in them by Harvard only professors, it will be a relatively small hit. They take the best in all science disciplines from all over the world.
I think their theory is that journals that don't allow this will have to change their policy, as they wouldn't want to lose out on publishing articles from Harvard profs.
Ah, good old fashioned Harvard arrogance. Let's see how long this lasts. In my field, the number of decent journals I can think of that allow open access and reproduction could be counted on the fingers of one hand. After playing with a live hand grenade.
I think more professors want their articles available on SSRN networks than just Harvard's.
copyrights don't matter when you have educational purposes. I always have wondered by folks that download mp3s and end up in court because of it haven't said they were trying to broaden their education...?
Their theory also is that other professors and universities will follow Harvard's lead again. Laugh all you want, but so many aspects of the American education system originated at Harvard.
This is an obvious and important adjustment to the internet.
Go to SSRN and look at the law articles. A lot of very nice ones, the best ones published in a journal that allows a free copy to be distributed. I've seen first hand this trend. Journals will take notice and adjust.
Perhaps matriculating at Harvard doesn't garantee the best education, but just getting in is quite an honor.
Overall this is a very good move. The default will now be to publish articles openly, at least "author's versions". Yes, some authors might request the waiver to not do so, but this applies pressure on them and the journals. Very nice, Harvard, hopefully others will follow you soon.
You call it Harvard arrogance, I call it a noble effort. They have a strong hand, and I think they have every ethical right to attempt to enforce a more open atmosphere of knowledge in the face of academic journals which seem to be working contrary to that end.
Whether anything comes with it is another matter, but I'm glad they're trying.
Have you watched the Simpsons lately?
I'm taking the semester off and I'm thinking I should have taken basket-weaving (a class I would no doubt fail) just to maintain my access to journals. Just the other night, I was looking for information on fairly new algorithms for dealing with image processing and almost every reference I could find was a journal I'd have to pay to get access to.
It seems to me that it's in everyone's best interest to make this information freely available. Think about it, as a programmer, having access to this information may allow me to write better software. If I'm selling that software, I'm a part of the economy and this information may have made the difference between mediocre software people wouldn't pay for and amazing software that's very popular. It's the same with many fields. Many companies can't afford these academic journals for their employees, or maybe only a small subset. It's a boost to the economy for everyone (except the journals) if this stuff is made freely available.
In addition to the economic boost, there's the quality of life boost. These articles can lead to products that improve QOL. Another important incentive.
I can't think of a single reason that journals should be making money (and a nice chunk of change at that) for work which is largely not theirs. They do editing, can help with peer-review and so forth, and obviously printing, but the actual meat, the articles, are the works of others. Subscriptions cost and arm and a leg and if I'm not mistaken, I believe most of these journals don't pay the authors. I think, in fact, many charge the authors!
Yeah, whatever. Maybe it is arrogance but they're doing what is the right thing and they expect you to deal with it. It's what any moral principle is; worth fighting for.
they could get by very well without students - their HUGE endowment allows them to do a lot of things that "normal" schools couldn't get away with
maybe in 50 or 60 years without students they might have a problem (when they no longer have rich alumni leaving them money)...
until then, eduction is a perfectly cromulent spelling because as Jebediah Springfield once said, "A noble spirit enbiggens the smallest man."
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
eduction transitive verb
Maybe everyone who attends Harvard has an eduction ceremony before they leave?? I just hope whoever ends up to educting their scholarly articles uses a better method of spell checking. :-P
I think this is a great move. No matter how respected a publication is, the publisher can't afford to lose the Harvard faculty articles. After all, they're from Harvard faculty. These people _WILL_ find a place to publish their articles, and those articles will be read no matter where they're published. So, the publishers, regardless of what their policy is now, will have to bend over and approve the waivers for Harvard faculty, and if they give waivers to Harvard faculty, I am pretty sure that the researchers from other schools will demand the same treatment as well.
> Ah, good old fashioned Harvard arrogance. Let's see how long this lasts.
:-)
My university has the same policy, although it is only recommended, not mandatory. So far I had no serious issues, as most publishers will accept copyright forms that retain the right to make the paper available on-line. Change is certainly happening, and it is about time to hop on the band wagon.
But wouldn't that just accelerate the demise of those journals, since then there would be little reason to subscribe? I know that lately I've been chaffing at the cost of IEEE and ACM journal subscriptions. The main reason I bother is to get access to the articles I need for my research.
This conversation reminds me of the dilemma faced by newspapers regarding putting their content online, and if so whether or not to require an online subscription. There's no good answer for the newspapers now that the web offers an arguably superior distribution method for the content.
Many journals allow open access if the author pays a fee.
The arrogance comes not from Harvard, but from the people who expect to make a living off of their reputation alone. The research is paid for by tax payer dollars. The reviewers work for free. They add literally no value besides their name. And in science what really matters is the quality of your research, not the name attached to it. It's a total racket, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. I'll be glad to see them go the way of the buggy whip makers.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Harvard makes a copy of the article freely available. What about those journals (Nature and Science, maybe?) that do not allow this"
How would Havard publishing online prevent them getting published in Nature or Science. Do you have any citations that say this?
"the author grants AAAS exclusive rights to use and authorize use of the work, but retains actual copyright and substantial reuse rights"
"Nature Publishing Group offers a range of reprints and permissions services for authors, readers, writers and commercial companies"
davecb5620@gmail.com
I've never published to Science or Nature, so I can't speak authoratatively about those. I do know about where I have published: the Physical Review journals, including the esteemed Phys. Rev. Letters, all have a clause in their copyright notice saying that the authors give up all rights to publish their paper elsewhere except on their personal/professional webpage (as long as they don't charge money).
Thus, you can often find the articles you want by simply googling the author.
Also, a lot of people are willing to send you their papers if you ask them. Most people are really happy to oblige when someone shows an interest in their work.
And then there's always arxiv.org.
Distribution is easy money, because you don't have to create anything to gain profit, so I'm sure many of these journals will be upset by this new way of doing things, just like the RIAA companies are upset by even legal music download. In the end, laziness is a poor business model, and if you don't add value to a product you won't survive in an internet economy.
http://www.mhall119.com
The NSF would really be in a position to push open access with such a policy. It they required all (partially) NSF-funded research articles to be available online, electronically, in their final published version, that would have a huge immediate effect on all scientific journals.
Anyone have an idea whether this has been discussed or might be realistic?
I agree. Knowing that an article got published in ACM's Transactions on Programming Languages is a great sign that it's a paper worth making time to read. I think it's terribly important that we somehow retain a set of reviewers who decide what paper are worth broad attention.
But aren't these reviewers unpaid? If so, they could just as well organize themselves outside of the context of some journal. I think all that's really missing at that point is getting a small editorial board to decide what topics are worth focusing on, etc. Of course, since academics' and researchers' careers are measured in terms of their publication history, there is some impedance to changing this system.
http://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+open+source+software&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Would be nice to seem them plow ahead even further into Open Source and give a resurgence to Open Source-friendly magazines, able to cite Harvard faculty/staff/professor/tutor/student achievements and projects.
I bet that would infuriate Gates. Chairs might even start populating Harvard's lawns...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
He was *joking*. Get a clue, get a life.
Hey! I'm a buggy whip maker, you insensitive clod!
Fucktard = someone making the same mistake they are picking on.
Regarding your sig as of 13 Feb 2008, which asks, "Why would an Atheist vote Obama?"
I'm an atheist (among other things), and I'll most likely vote for Mr. Obama. One of the things that I admire about him is that, even though he's confirmed he's a more-or-less Congregationalist Christian, he doesn't use his religion as his platform. The only time I've ever noticed him bring up his religion was in rebuttal to claims he was a Muslim. I don't care what religion he chooses to practice (or not practice)--religion is a personal choice, and has no place in politics. As long as he doesn't make political decisions based on faith-based ignorance, he's cool with me.
Huckabee, on the other hand...
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
It's really pretty obvious. You don't attend school for schooling - you attend school to meet people so you can use them later.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Exactly, Harvard is simply taking advantage of the fact that they are a leading institution and must figure that many other research schools will follow quickly. In fact I really doubt this was done in a vacuum, they surely had informal communications with other institutions which agreed to follow their lead.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
STFW? If Nature and whatever other journals are going to be greedy about it then Harvard can just publish with PLoS and there will be no problems, PLoS is likely to take over the role of most revered and highest volume academic journal in the next 10 years anyway... (in the interest of self disclosure, the company I work for runs the online manuscript submission and peer review sites for all of the PLoS journals $$$ ;)
This is a move in the right direction towards an acceptable model of academic publishing. I find it interesting and not surprising that this policy was proposed by a computer science professor, I think this is the open source philosophy spilling over into non-computer-code realms. For those that are not familiar with the publication process, and who might have some misconceptions as to where money and labor comes from, here's a basic rundown:
In order to access the published material, one must have a paid subscription, either individual or institutional, the latter often being tens of thousands of dollars per year per journal, pushing total subscription costs for institutions well into the millions of dollars per year. So, for the revenues generated from both authors paying publishing fees and institutions and individuals paying (often hefty) subscriptions, the journal arranges unpaid peer reviewing and typesets and publishes the manuscript, that's it. In addition to the subscription fees, the journal retains copyright to the works published. So we have a situation where taxpayer-funded research is stuck behind a very expensive wall. In my opinion this research must be freely available to the public, period. The question then is, if journals are not replaced with a different model, who pays them to keep them in business? I propose that the journals be contracted by the federal government and paid directly. Government (whether state or federal in the U.S.) is already paying the journals, both through grant money for author publishing fees as well as institutional subscriptions, but what it is getting is closed to the public. A direct payment keeps the journals in business (they do provide an important service) and the information is publicly available. I don't know how feasible this scheme is, but it's an idea to fix a broken system.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
The research is paid for by tax payer dollars.
That's not always true in a great many cases. Much research is sponsored by companies or private institutions. And if you think publically funded equates to free public access in this country, go try to stay a night in the White House.
The reviewers work for free. They add literally no value besides their name.
That's true, but it editing and production costs aren't free. Additionally, many, many of the journals published by professional societies (nonprofit groups) are used to make money for use in education. So a great many charitable programs will be hit by this, which is something most people who ignorantly weigh in on this don't know.
And in science what really matters is the quality of your research, not the name attached to it.
Christ, is that naive. I'll trust you aren't a scientist.
and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. I'll be glad to see them go the way of the buggy whip makers.
They won't. Harvard will lose this one if they try to press it.
The importance of this *cannot* be understated.
Junior faculty, in particular, are currently *forced* to publish in the "best" journal they can, with the bulk of those being the "sign it over" variety. To publish in a lesser journal is to risk tenure.
Now, suddenly, the University is providing a new list of top journals, and tenure will come from posting to the rest of those.
The academic publishing industry is a dinosaur in desperate need of elimination. It charges tens of thousands of dollars per school for journals that would be more useful as web sites--, not and available several months earlier. As it exists, journals are for the benefit of the publishing companies, not the world at large, academia, or the authors. The economic model is that the faculty write, are paid nothing, and the libraries pay huge fees to the publishing houses.
Will the publishers react to open up? I doubt it; they can't.
The *real* result of this will be top articles going to online journals, which will first rival and then displace the printed journals. This is a good thing for everyone except the publishing houses.
hawk, formerly junior faculty but now back in practice and paid well enough that *his* kids can go to school, too
Although it took along time a university such as Harvard figured out that open access means far higher citation rates which translates to more prestige for their researchers, and ultimately more money for the university. Many journals already figured out this formula works for them too. Harvard is the kind of high caliber university that can force the big journals that are still holdouts to see the light.
Also closed access journals just make doing research painful in a time when it could (and should) be much easier. It sucks trying to access journals from off campus (especially older articles). Currently I have access to two university libraries and can use their proxies to fetch online articles. I still get stuck going to the library once in a while and thumbing through an old journal just to find the paper is totally irrelevant to what I'm doing. Yay for arxiv!!!
I know many examples where a paper happened to be published in a journal that the university of the researcher no longer has access to. That's just ridiculous.
Something that I don't think is clear in what I just wrote.
The big deal is that this will make it the norm, and the *expectation of the university*, that faculty will publish in freely available journals. Right now this isn't an option to those seeking tenure or promotion. (OTOH, if Harvard suddenly expects faculty to get waivers for most of their articles, the whole thing becomes a bunch of dead letters).
Again, the big deal is that it makes it *possible* for faculty to publish in these journals.
hawk
This is about time. I hate it when doing a literature search, and you can not access half of the journal articles.
Another b*tch is the IEEE - even if you are a member, you can not view the articles. But they will gladly publish your article without giving you a cent.
I luckily have access to IEEE Xplore, but a lot of the smaller universities can simply not afford it.
People in industry must also dole out an arm and a leg for an article - yet they pay for most of the research (directly or indirectly).
It reminds me of the argument put toward the "MAFIAA": Adapt to a new way of doing business or die.
I don't see why Science or Nature should get a pass.
No sig for you!!
Moreover, just add a few more top universities, and any journal that doesn't allow open access will quickly stop being a top journal.
Journals are costly and most publishers are for-profit, so they restrict contents access to paid subscribers. Else some charge authors per page, like the Public Online Journal of Science (free to readers; mostly biology topics). I've been on editorial committees for scientific societies and can say that even if printing costs or web costs were free there woudl still be other significant cost fo recover such a administering the editorial process. I dont have an answer of how to pay for it.
So publishers usually own the main copyright to scientific articles, usually with the provision the author can make some limited free disributions of single articles. Harvard wishes to change this.
The most serious problems I've heard are ill people who wish to read medical journals and find restrictions form publishers and access to university library. A fair fraction of these are only paid online.
Looking at their licensing agreement here. it would appear that you can post your work in a very limited fashion... in some cases you'd need to ask the AAAS for permission to reprint your own material once submitted.
...but I'm not lawyer-shaped, so mayhaps one here can render an opinion...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I don't think that will be enough to get a gig as a Simpsons writer.
If you wanted to be a Hollywood writer you missed your opportunity now that the strike is over.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
A common term is "self-archiving", and it's been widespread in physics and comp sci at least since the early to mid 1990s, and by now most journals have given in and officially allow it---it was so widespread already that their only choice was to bless it, or to try to put the genie back in the bottle by C&D'ing their own authors. I'm starting to see it more and more commonly mentioned in other fields as well; many statistics and math journals now allow self-archiving, for example, and one even generates and submits the preprints to arxiv.org itself.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
so they are not extinct! ... yet...
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Even though your UID starts with 666 you make a lousy devil's advocate.
1. A paper is not physical property so the whitehouse analogy is just plain silly.
2. Just because YOU don't value quality above authority does not imply the same intellectual weakness is prevalent amoungst scientists. It does however hint at the kind of sour grapes often expressed by those who lack the insight and/or work ethic required to perform quality research.
3. Allowing anyone with an internet connection to read quality research first hand will do far more for education than the 'charity' of special interest groups.
4. Havard is big enough that it does not have to give it's copyright to anyone in order to be taken seriously. Cambridge - "[N]ot just a leading British publisher, it is the oldest printer and publisher in the world and one of the largest academic publishers globally".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Since then is formal education correlated with intelligence?