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.

Comments

Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that

[TheGoodSteven]

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.

Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that

[proxima]

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.

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.

Bullshit!!

[Sethosayher]

Not fair! I paid 40k a year to get an education and exclude people in the process!

Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that

[kebes]

What about those journals (Nature and Science, maybe?) that do not allow this. Well Nature Magazine actually does allow you to publish even if you've put the article on a pre-print server (see this blog post that explains their editorial policy). In fact, Nature runs their own pre-print server called Nature Precedings, so they are obviously preprint-friendly. In fact, a large number of journals are preprint-friendly (about 2/3 of all journals, according to TFA). Although many journals are not yet supportive for open access (I can't find a preprint policy for Science Magazine), the trend is clearly towards allowing preprint archiving.

Does this mean that Harvard will break copyright agreements? According to TFA:

The new policy will allow faculty members to request a waiver, but otherwise they must provide an electronic form of each article to the provost's office

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.

Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that

[Mr. Underbridge]

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.

Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that

[Moonpie Madness]

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.

Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that

[kripkenstein]

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. Actually the article does say:

The new policy will allow faculty members to request a waiver, but otherwise they must provide an electronic form of each article to the provost's office, which will place it in an online repository. In other words, to publish in journals that do not allow open access, the authors will simply need to request a waiver. Presumably this will be a minor bureaucratic matter. But note that even if a journal isn't 'open access', many such journals let authors do what they will with "author's versions" of the article (or the journals just ignore the practice). Such a version lacks the journal's formatting and so forth. So there might not be a problem here at all.

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.

Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that

[thsths]

> 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. :-)

Re:Not a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

google for "OAI-PMH repositories". I know they're out there because I write software that aggregates from them. www.arxiv.org has a metric buttload of them, and if you're into medical/bio check out www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov (over a million alone). My database currently has links to 2.5 million freely available scholarly articles, many of which are peer reviewed, the data is out there and google is your friend.

Moving in the Right Direction

[kidcharles]

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:

1. The author, more often than not funded with tax dollars, submits a fully written manuscript to a journal
   
2. The journal arranges to have one or more individuals in the field review this manuscript and give their input. These people are anonymous volunteers and are unpaid.
   
3. The journal sends the anonymous comments to the author, the author makes corrections and resubmits.
   
4. Steps 2 and 3 are repeated until the manuscript is either accepted or rejected.
   
5. If accepted, the author pays the journal for publishing (typically $1k or more for a single article).
   
6. The journal fixes small typographical errors, typesets the documents, and publishes the article online (as PDF) and in paper form.
   

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.