Stevan,
I'm sure your version is preferable to the one actually passed by
FAS. Some of us urged a more forceful approach. However, those with a
better political sense thought otherwise.
Note also that only the Faculty of Arts and Sciences - large as it is
- has accepted this policy. It has yet to be debated at the schools
of law, business, medical, education, design, divinity, or public
administraion.
Terry
Stevan Harnad wrote:
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 ProvostâEUR[tm]s 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 DeanâEUR[tm]s 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 ProvostâEUR[tm]s Office in an
appropriate format
(such as PDF) specified by the ProvostâEUR[tm]s
Office. The ProvostâEUR[tm]s
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 ProvostâEUR[tm]s 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
ProvostâEUR[tm]s Office in an appropriate format
(such as PDF) specified
by the ProvostâEUR[tm]s Office. THIS CAN BE DONE
EITHER BY DEPOSITING IT
DIRECTLY IN HARVARD'S INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY OR BY
EMAILING IT TO
THE PROVOSTâEUR[tm]S 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
DeanâEUR[tm]s 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/
--
Harry S. Martin III (Terry)
Henry N. Ess III Librarian & Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
511 Areeda Hall
1545 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-496-2121
Fax: 617-495-4449
www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/martin
Received on Wed Feb 13 2008 - 20:32:31 GMT