Reply from Corie Lok

Corie Lok — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:59:14 -0000

Stevan, just to clarify the record, these proposed changes are ones that you are recommending to Harvard, right?

Reply from Stevan Harnad

Stevan Harnad — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:20:39 -0000

OA’s target content is peer-reviewed research. That means the author’s refereed final draft (“postprint”), accepted for publication, but not necessarily the publisher’s PDF.

University OA self-archiving mandates like Harvard’s require deposit in the university’s own Institutional Repository (IR). Central Repositories like PubMed Central can then harvest from NIH fundees’ IRs. There is no longer any need for direct central deposit too. (And let’s hope university and funder mandates will now coordinate, and both mandate convergent deposit in the researcher’s own university IR, the primary research provider, rather than competing and mandating divergent and redundant deposit all over the map!) See the ROAR Repository Registry and the ROARMAP Policy Registry.

Here are a few small but crucial changes to the current wording of Harvard’s OA Mandate. They will immunize the deposit requirement against any opt-outs from the copyright-retention requirement and will increase the probability that the mandate will succeed and that it will be taken up by other universities. (The clauses have been re-orderered and the italicized passages have been added. Other universities may also omit clauses 2 and 3 if they wish):

Proposed revision:

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 peer-reviewed final draft of each article at no charge to the appropriate representative of the Provost’s Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost’s Office. This can be done either by depositing it directly in Harvard’s Institutional Repository or by emailing it to the Provost’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 Dean’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.

Stevan Harnad

Reply from Maxine Clarke

Maxine Clarke — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:22:53 -0000

See Nature news article on this story.

Reply from Graham Steel

Graham Steel — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:28:18 -0000

And next…......The University of Oregon.

Reply from Graham Steel

Graham Steel — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:26:43 -0000

There is a detailed roundup of commentary on the Harvard OA policy over at Open Access News

Reply from Maxine Clarke

Maxine Clarke — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:52:10 -0000

In that Chronicle of Higher Education article to which you refer, there is an interesting comment thread, including a comment from someone on the board of the Copyright Clearing Center, and one from the director of the Purdue Press, providing clarifications from the perspective of their organisations.
The overwhelming message from this comment thread, and from your post, is that the policy has been announced but isn’t very clear as to what is meant precisely and hence, what are the real implications of the new policy.

Recent replies to "Harvard faculty votes on Internet-based open "publishing""

Reply from Corie Lok

Reply from Stevan Harnad

Reply from Maxine Clarke

Reply from Graham Steel

Reply from Graham Steel

Reply from Maxine Clarke