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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...
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
> 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.
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!
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.
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 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
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!!
It's precisely this attitude that encourages bad scholarship.
I see the argument in other places many, many times (and, in fact, there's a 'documentary' by Ben Stein coming out that uses the same thing shortly): "Academia must be wrong because they're ignoring any controversial ideas in favor of their own status quo." This is discussed in the context of the evolution/ID nonsense, but leaving that particular 'controversy' aside, there are other considerations.
Both sides--I'll label them "Ivory Tower" and "Suspicious Rabble" for convenience--do have their points. Ivory Tower wants to ensure that only quality scholarship is available--that anything that gets published is as absolutely accurate (within the ability of humanity to make it so) as possible. Suspicious Rabble, on the other hand, having been denied access not only to the knowledge that the Ivory Tower is hoarding but also to the process by which such knowledge is adjudicated, becomes convinced that Ivory Tower is deliberately closing its eyes to anything that doesn't fit into the Tower's view of the cosmos.
What the Rabble does not understand, of course, is that the conservatism of the Tower is there for a reason--that without extensive substantiation; without proper evidence; without extensive preparations to ensure that the research, experiments, analysis, and conclusions are accurate; there exists a risk that a good, working model may be discarded in favor of an inferior model--that there would be a step backward.
What the Tower does not understand is that it is their very exclusivity that causes the Rabble to adopt these inaccurate and wrong conclusions. If the Rabble understood why, for your example, Safire is not taken seriously by the Tower, would they want to buy his books? If the Rabble understood why ID is nothing but a house of cards built to obscure a logical fallacy, would there be anyone who bothered to defend it?
Not to say that the conservative attitude of the Tower be relaxed entirely--one must always ensure that the research, experimentation, analysis, and the logic behind the conclusions is checked and checked again for validity. But too much secrecy, as you seem to advocate, will only hurt the Tower in the future. As you withdraw from the Rabble--as you continue to assume that the majority of the Rabble is incapable of understanding what you do--you make yourself irrelevant to the Rabble, and they will have no desire to be educated or to understand you.
How do you counter the mistaken assumptions of the Rabble, then? How do you avoid their veneering of shit with sycamore?
One way would be to make it easier to find these citations. As it is, the obstructions placed in the path of the common person to finding the substance of most articles actually lends -credence- to these very people who you wish to avoid endorsing: all they have to do is cite a paper that vaguely references something related in the abstract, and that very veneering has been accomplished, and for the most part cannot be effectively countered. You've made the situation worse.
Another way would be to do your own "science reporting"--that is, append to the abstracts of an article a plain-language abstract for folks like science reporters and casual readers who are not in-touch with the jargon of the particular discipline of the paper in question. In this way, you can pre-emptively avoid bad citations (and bad newspaper reporting, as well).
Continuing to keep knowledge exclusive and the purview of only a chosen few will lead only to the fall of the Tower. Allowing members of the Rabble some modicum of understanding--perhaps even allowing some members of the Rabble to become, as it were, Amateur Agents of the Tower, to continue the metaphor--will serve to help both the Tower and the Rabble come to a mutual understanding and to increase the quality of scholarship across the board.
tl;dr: Don't be a snotty bastard; it'll only hurt you worse.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree