Absent any new information (or amendments) to the contrary, Harvard
University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday February 12 adopted the
world's 38th Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate -- the 16th of the
institutional or departmental mandates.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~secfas/February_2008_Agenda.pdf
An OA mandate from Harvard is especially significant, timely and welcome for
the worldwide Open Access movement, as Harvard will of course be widely
emulated, and many other universities are now proposing to adopt OA
mandates.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/356-guid.html
The objective of the Harvard (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) mandate is to
provide Open Access (OA) to its own scholarly article output. This objective
is accomplished by making those articles freely accessible on the web, by
depositing them in a Harvard OA Institutional Repository.
The means of attaining this objective is to mandate OA, which Harvard has
now done. But Harvard has gone further, and mandated copyright retention as
well. Copyright retention is highly desirable and welcome, *but it is not
necessary in order to provide OA*; and mandating copyright retention has
also necessitated the adoption of an opt-out clause because of potential
author resistance to perceived or actual constraints on their choice of
journal.
In order to prevent the copyright-retention requirement from compromising
the deposit requirement, I accordingly urge a few small but crucial changes
in the wording of the mandate.
First, here is the Harvard OA mandate as it now stands:
Motion on behalf of the Provostā~_at_~Ys Committee on Scholarly Publishing:
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University is committed to
disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely
as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts
the following policy:
[COPYRIGHT RETENTION POLICY] Each Faculty member grants to the
President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available
his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those
articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each Faculty
member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to
exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his
or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others
to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit.
[OPT-OUT CLAUSE] The policy will apply to all scholarly articles
written while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any
articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles
for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing
or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The
Dean or the Deanā~_at_~Ys designate will waive application of the policy
for a particular article upon written request by a Faculty member
explaining the need.
[DEPOSIT MANDATE] To assist the University in distributing the
articles, each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of
the final version of the article at no charge to the appropriate
representative of the Provostā~_at_~Ys Office in an appropriate format
(such as PDF) specified by the Provostā~_at_~Ys Office. The Provostā~@~Ys
Office may make the article available to the public in an open-access
repository.
The Office of the Dean will be responsible for interpreting this
policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and
application, and recommending changes to the Faculty from time to
time. The policy will be reviewed after three years and a report
presented to the Faculty.
Now here are the small but crucial changes that will immunize the deposit
requirement against any opt-outs from the copyright-retention requirement
(note the re-ordering of the clauses, and the addition of
the CAPITALIZED PASSAGES):
Motion on behalf of the Provostā~_at_~Ys Committee on Scholarly Publishing:
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University is committed to
disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely
as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts
the following policy:
[DEPOSIT MANDATE] To assist the University IN PROVIDING OPEN ACCESS
TO ALL SCHOLARLY ARTICLES PUBLISHED BY ITS FACULTY MEMBERS, each
Faculty member IS REQUIRED TO provide, IMMEDIATELY UPON ACCEPTANCE
FOR PUBLICATION, an electronic copy of the final version of each
article at no charge to the appropriate representative of the
Provostā~_at_~Ys Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified
by the Provostā~_at_~Ys Office. THIS CAN BE DONE EITHER BY DEPOSITING IT
DIRECTLY IN HARVARD'S INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY OR BY EMAILING IT TO
THE PROVOSTā~_at_~YS OFFICE TO BE DEPOSITED ON THE AUTHOR'S BEHALF.
[COPYRIGHT RETENTION POLICY] Each Faculty member IS ALSO ENCOURAGED
TO GRANT to the President and Fellows of Harvard College permission
to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the
copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted
by each Faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up,
worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright
relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium,
and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles
are not sold for a profit.
[POLICY OPT-OUT CLAUSE] The COPYRIGHT RETENTION AND LICENCE-GRANTING
POLICY will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person
is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before
the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty
member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement
before the adoption of this policy. The Dean or the Deanā~_at_~Ys designate
will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon
written request by a Faculty member explaining the need.
The Office of the Dean will be responsible for interpreting this
policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and
application, and recommending changes to the Faculty from time to
time. The policy will be reviewed after three years and a report
presented to the Faculty.
Hyperlinked version of this posting:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/362-guid.html
Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h
tml
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open Access
to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal
http://romeo.eprints.org/
OR
BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access journal if/when
a suitable one exists.
http://www.doaj.org/
AND
in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article
in your own institutional repository.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://archives.eprints.org/
http://openaccess.eprints.org/
Received on Wed Feb 13 2008 - 17:02:45 GMT