Harvard Arts and Sciences Faculty Set to Vote on Open-Access Plan
This morning's New York Times brings news central to thefacultylounge.org's discussions--a plan to have the library (run by one of our heroes, Robert Darnton) distribute faculty scholarship free on the web. Faculty will retain the copyright and can publish elsewhere--and they can also opt out of the plan if they'd like. Will be interesting to see where this all goes.
Here's a short excerpt from the article:
“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”
Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased — including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them.
Will the rest of the academy follow Harvard's lead? Time will tell.
I've got to leave the lounge and catch up on some work. On one of my next visits, I want to talk some more about some other Harvard related news, including the magazine 02138.
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