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.

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

[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.