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 | A Shot Heard 'Round the Academic World: Harvard FAS Mandates Open Access
In a historic measure, the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Tuesday unanimously approved a motion that compels Harvard researchers to deposit their "scholarly articles" in an open access (OA) repository to be managed within the library and to be made freely available to anyone via the Internet. Faculty members, however, can opt-out of compliance by obtaining a waiver, a point some OA advocates say could potentially undermine the policy's effectiveness. Nevertheless, the Harvard vote provided a resonant "shot heard 'round the world" for the open access movement.
"This is a large and very important step," said Stuart Shieber, professor of computer science at Harvard, who put forth the motion. "It should be a very powerful message to the academic community that we want and should have more control over how our work is used and disseminated." In a statement released following the vote, Shieber cited serials costs that have "risen to such astronomical levels," forcing cancellations and "reducing the circulation of scholars' works."
Specifically, the Harvard motion resembles a publishing contract of sorts; it compels faculty to give Harvard non-exclusive, irrevocable permission to distribute their articles online, which Harvard intends to do, as well as permitting others to use the works as well, as long as those uses are non-profit. 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." Faculty members retain their copyrights in the articles, subject to the university's license and are free to publish in other journals. The legislation does not apply to articles completed before adoption of the motion, and does not apply to Harvard's professional schools.
Curiously, the policy also, "when preferable," allows faculty to opt-out of compliance. All one has to do, is ask. "The policy specifies that a waiver of the license for an article will be granted by request of the faculty author," Shieber told the LJ Academic Newswire. "This is in keeping with the principle that the policy should serve the faculty, and faculty members are in the best position to determine that in individual cases."
Critics, however, including OA pioneer Stevan Harnad, questioned whether "potential author resistance to perceived or actual constraints on their choice of which journal to publish in," could hamper the policy—in other words, if the most prestigious journal in a researchers' field requires exclusivity, will that be enough to motivate a researcher to opt-out?
Valid questions, among many others, that will surely be examined in practice: the motion provides for an analysis of the legislation's effectiveness, with a report to be delivered in three years. "There are of course many details of implementation still being worked on," Shieber told the Newswire. "In general, these will be worked out under the principle of serving the faculty best in the distribution of their scholarly writings."
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After Harvard, the Open Access Deluge?
With the passage of Harvard's open access (OA) mandate this week, is a tipping point at hand? After the historic Harvard vote on Tuesday, and with open access policies now being considered at other major universities, OA has already received a jolt of momentum in 2008. "Harvard is inserting the wedge and making it easier for other universities to follow suit with similar policies," noted Peter Suber, in an excellent roundup of reactions to the open access mandate approved at Harvard on his Open Access News blog.
Similar OA policies, Suber notes, are now actively being considered by faculty at a number of universities, including the University of California, and the University of Oregon, whose faculty senate yesterday adopted a policy of its own that "encourages all faculty who publish scholarly works to study the issues of copyright ownership and liability," and established an ad hoc working committee to report back to the full senate this Spring. Suber observed that the Oregon measure was "not so much a response to Harvard as the fruit of an independent, simultaneous consideration of the same underlying policy issues. The Harvard vote along with the Oregon vote and the dozen or so preceding university-level OA mandates will undoubtedly inspire similar actions in time."
Indeed, it is hard not to take stock of how far things have come: on an individual level, more than two thirds of academic journals now permit self-archiving on author web sites or in institutional repositories, including all Elsevier journals. Funding agencies, as evidenced by the recent passage of the NIH's mandatory public access policy, as well as recent mandates by funding agencies in Europe including the RCUK, and the Wellcome Trust are supporting open access. Innovative approaches like the recent deal between Germany's Max Planck Society and Springer, which includes a provision to pay for MPS researchers' open access charges in Springer journals, indicate a shift in commercial publishers toward OA options.
"What is clear is that the need for open access, and the failure of the traditional model of scientific publishing to make full use of the Internet's potential in this respect, are no longer issues of interest only to librarians or to activists," observed Matt Cockerill, president of open access publisher BioMed Central on his blog after the Harvard vote. "Open access is no longer just a nice idea," he added, "but a concrete objective. Over the course of 2008, the key focus will be not on rhetoric, but on the practical issues necessary to make wide-scale open access a reality."
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| Shieber: Librarians Very Involved with Harvard OA Motion
"There is no question that scholarly journals have historically allowed scholars to distribute their research to audiences around the world," said Stuart Shieber, the Harvard University professor of computer science who put forth the historic open access mandate approved by the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences this week. "But, the scholarly publishing system has become far more restrictive than it need be." Librarians across the country no doubt are familiar with that sentiment, and for years have advocated awareness to faculty members. Shieber took time from a busy historic day—to take a few quick questions from the Newswire about his engagement with open access issues.
LJAN: How did you become involved with open access? Was there a high level of engagement with Harvard's FAS on this issue prior to the motion?
Shieber: I've been involved on various library committees for almost my entire career as a faculty member and have followed open access and related issues closely. Among faculty, there is a wide range of levels of engagement with these issues. But observations of dysfunction in the scholarly publishing systems are quite widespread.
Usually, it seems faculty become aware of the cost of serials after a cancellation exercise. What was the key driver of the policy at Harvard?
I think that different people have different motivations for support of the policy. My own interests are in seeing that our writings have the broadest distribution feasible. We've also gone through stringent serials reviews with large levels of cancellations, even at Harvard, whose library is the largest academic library in the world. If we can't afford a sufficiently broad set of journals here, you can imagine the constraints that other research institutions are in. The open access policy just voted is intended to make sure that our writings are widely available in the face of these widespread cancellations.
How much did librarians contribute to the process of this faculty mandate?
Librarians have been very involved with these issues, and with the work on this policy. There was important library representation on the Provost's Committee on Scholarly Publishing, which developed this proposal, and involvement of librarians at many points, including an open forum with librarians on the motion.
With tenure and advancement very much tied to publication, any thoughts on how this motion might affect publication issues?
It is important to keep in mind that the kind of open access distribution through repositories is completely separate from the process of reviewing, vetting, editing, and imprimatur in the journal system. Open access repositories are not a substitute for journals. They are a complement to them. It is important that those processes continue, and to the extent that they involve expenses, universities and funding agencies will have to continue to pay for them.
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| UIUC Research Center To Study "Digital Effect" on Scholarship
The Library Research Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is expanding the scope of its activities and changing its name to the GSLIS Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS). In addition to its 45-year history of conducting web-based and print survey design and administration, focus groups, telephone interviews, market research, and other social scientific studies for its clients, CIRSS will extend its focus to "information problems facing research communities and the advancement and integration of digital information within and across disciplines."
With the retirement of Leigh Estabrook in August 2007, GSLIS associate professor Carole Palmer has been named director of the reestablished center. According to Palmer, "Our aim is to build on the Center's strong foundation to catalyze a range of new research on how digital information can advance the work of scientists and scholars....We also believe that this is now an area fundamental to the future of the information professions. Many of our projects are already done in partnership with scientific and scholarly communities, and CIRSS will help facilitate this collaborative approach and provide an infrastructure for broader programs of research."
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Best Sellers in Chemistry, June 2007–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
(13 digit ISBNs in brackets)
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Computational Organic Chemistry
Bachrach, Steven M.
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0471713422 [9780471713425]. $110.00
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Synthetic Organic Chemist's Companion
Pirrung, Michael C.
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0470107073 [9780470107072]. $49.95
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Comprehensive Organic Reactions in Aqueous Media
Li, Chao-Jun
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 047176129x [9780471761297]. $125.00
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Superelectrophiles and Their Chemistry
Olah, George A.
John Wiley
2008. ISBN 0470049618 [9780470049617]. $125.00
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Polymer Dynamics and Relaxation
Boyd, Richard
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521814197 [9780521814195]. $150.00
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Biotechnology Policy Across National Boundaries: The Science-Industrial Complex
West, Darrell M.
Palgrave Macmillan
2007. ISBN 1403972516 [9781403972514]. $69.95
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Labeling Genetically Modified Food: The Philosophical and Legal Debate
Weirich, Paul
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195326865 [9780195326864]. $65.00
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NMR Spectroscopy Explained: Simplified Theory, Applications and Examples for Organic Chemistry
Jacobsen, Neil E.
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0471730963 [9780471730965]. $125.00
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Colorimetry: Understanding the Cie System
Schanda, Janos
2007. ISBN 0470049049 [9780470049044]. $115.00
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Principles of Nucleic Acid Structure
Neidle, Stephen
Elsevier Academic Press
2008. ISBN 0123695074 [9780123695079]. $69.95
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Protein Condensation: Kinetic Pathways to Crystallization and Disease
Gunton, J.D.
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521851211 [9780521851213]. $135.00
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Chemistry and Biology of Winemaking
Hornsey, Ian
Royal Society of Chemistry
2007. ISBN 0854042660 [9780854042661]. $59.95
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Principles of Tissue Engineering
Lanza, Robert
Elsevier Academic Press
2007. ISBN 0123706157 [9780123706157]. $135.00
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Quality Assurance in Analytical Chemistry
Prichard, F. Elizabeth
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 047001203x [9780470012031]. $160.00
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Practical Introduction to the Simulation of Molecular Systems
Field, Martin
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521852528 [9780521852524]. $125.00
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Biotechnology, Security and the Search for Limits: An Inquiry into Research and Methods
Rappert, Brian
Palgrave Macmillan
2007. ISBN 023000248x [9780230002487]. $74.95
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Quantum Chemistry
McQuarrie, Donald A.
University Science
2008. ISBN 1891389505 [9781891389504]. $90.00
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Polymers: Chemistry and Physics of Modern Materials
Cowie, J. M.
CRC Press
2008. ISBN 0849398134 [9780849398131]. $79.95
-
Introduction to Non-Equilibrium Physical Chemistry: Towards Complexity and Non-Linear Science
Rastogi, R. P.
Elsevier
2008. ISBN 0444521887 [9780444521880]. $155.00
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Spectroscopy in Catalysis: An Introduction
Niemantsverdriet, J. W.
Wiley-Vch
2007. ISBN 3527316515 [9783527316519]. $135.00
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