[Icommons] open access scholarly publishing @ harvard

Fred Benenson fred.benenson at gmail.com
Thu Feb 14 11:14:57 EST 2008


>
> Dr. David Berry wrote:
> >
> > I'm not sure I am so convinced. While I fully support free culture I
> > don't like top-down pressures to be compelled to pass work into these
> > repositories.
>

As noted in the article, faculty specifically have the right to opt-out of
this database. They may be compelled to release work into the OA repository,
but they're certainly not forced.


> It seems to me that this has to be carefully handled to
> > prevent, in effect, the stockpiling of academic's work into a large
> > database that the University controls.
>

If by "control" you mean "have physical access" to, then I'm not sure there
is a solution to that: someone, somewhere will always have immediate
physical access to any database. Even wikipedia runs like this (just try
getting access to the live dataset as I'm trying to do). If by "control" you
mean "exclusive rights" then I think John already responded to this question
-- the work is released under Open Access and can be shared as such. This is
quite different from work being supplied in a public database while still
retaining All-Rights-Reserved copyright.


> I would suggest this is *bad*
> > for free culture in the long run as it is not about changing hearts and
> > minds, but rather control and centralisation.
>

What is the difference between changing hearts and minds and "pressure" in
your opinion? Successful movements have the tendency to coalesce around
groups of people working on similar projects -- what you would call
centralisation -- I'm not sure how those people are supposed to win hearts
and minds of others and not be perceived as exerting pressure or acting
centrally.



F




> >
> > Best
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> > On 14 Feb 2008, at 15:04, Claudio Ruiz wrote:
> >
> >> What a wonderful news, Elizabeth.
> >>
> >> Right now we're disseminating this information to our network of
> >> academical and university librarians. We hope this will be a very
> >> important precedent to promote our Universities and academical centers
> >> to move on some Open Access policies like this.
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Claudio
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> El 14-02-2008, a las 0:09, Elizabeth Stark escribió:
> >>
> >>> The resolution passed unanimously! We're all super excited.
> >>>
> >>> Here's the text of the resolution:
> >>>
> >>> ******
> >>>
> >>> 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: 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. 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 Dean's designate
> >>> will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon
> >>> written request by a Faculty member explaining the need.
> >>> 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
> >>> Provost's Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by
> >>> the Provost's Office. The Provost'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.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Feb 13, 2008 3:55 PM, <joy.garnett at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Interesting:
> >>> via NYTimes:
> >>>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/books/12publ.html?ex=1360472400&en=2f1a54cc3c790e0f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web
> >>> By PATRICIA COHEN
> >>> Published: February 12, 2008
> >>>
> >>> Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring
> >>> university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will
> >>> decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.
> >>>
> >>> Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit
> >>> Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing
> >>> exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny
> >>> readerships and high subscription costs.
> >>>
> >>> Although the outcome of Tuesday's vote would apply only to Harvard's
> >>> arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university's
> >>> prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which
> >>> seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many
> >>> people as possible at no cost.
> >>>
> >>> "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.
> >>>
> >>> What distinguishes this plan from current practice, said Stuart
> >>> Shieber, a professor of computer science who is sponsoring the
> >>> faculty motion, is that it would create an "opt-out" system: an
> >>> article would be included unless the author specifically requested it
> >>> not be. Mr. Shieber was the chairman of a committee set up by
> >>> Harvard's provost to investigate scholarly publishing; this proposal
> >>> grew out of one of the recommendations, he said.
> >>>
> >>> The publishing industry, as well as some scholarly groups, have
> >>> opposed some forms of open access, contending that free distribution
> >>> of scholarly articles would ultimately eat away at journals' value
> >>> and wreck the existing business model. Such a development would in
> >>> turn damage the quality of research, they argue, by allowing articles
> >>> that have not gone through a rigorous process of peer review to be
> >>> broadcast on the Internet as easily as a video clip of Britney
> >>> Spears's latest hairdo. It would also cut into subsidies that some
> >>> journals provide for educational training and professional meetings,
> >>> they say.
> >>>
> >>> J. Lorand Matory, a professor of anthropology and African and African
> >>> American studies at Harvard, said he sympathized with the goal of
> >>> bringing down the sometimes exorbitant price of scientific
> >>> periodicals, but worried that a result would be to eliminate a whole
> >>> range of less popular journals that are subsidized by more profitable
> >>> ones.
> >>>
> >>> Art history periodicals, for example, are extremely expensive to
> >>> publish because of the reproduction costs, and subscriptions pay for
> >>> those as well as some of the discipline's annual gatherings.
> >>>
> >>> Professor Matory also pointed out that "any professor who wants to
> >>> put his or her article up online can."
> >>>
> >>> Asked about the Harvard proposal, Allan Adler, vice president for
> >>> legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American
> >>> Publishers, said that mandates are what publishers object to, as when
> >>> Congress required that any work financed by the National Institutes
> >>> for Health be funneled through PubMed Central, an open-access
> >>> repository maintained by the National Library of Medicine.
> >>>
> >>> "As long as they leave the element of choice for authors and
> >>> publishers," he said, "there isn't a problem."
> >>>
> >>> Supporters of open access say that the current system creates a
> >>> different set of problems for academics. Expensive journals cut into
> >>> a library's budget for scholarly books and monographs, which hurts
> >>> academic publishers, which hurts the coming generation of scholars
> >>> who must publish to gain tenure.
> >>>
> >>> Professor Shieber also doubts that free distribution would undermine
> >>> the journal industry. "We don't know if that would happen," he said.
> >>> "There is little evidence to support that it would." Nearly all
> >>> scholarly articles on physics have been freely available on the
> >>> Internet for more than a decade, he added, and physics journals
> >>> continue to thrive.
> >>>
> >>> As for the vote, Professor Shieber said: "As far as I know, everyone
> >>> I've ever talked to is supportive of the underlying principle. Still
> >>> there is a difference between an underlying principle and specific
> >>> proposal."
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Icommons mailing list
> >>> Icommons at lists.ibiblio.org
> >>
> >> Atentamente,
> >> Claudio Ruiz
> >> ONG Derechos Digitales
> >>
> >>
> >> <Claudio Ruiz.vcf>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Icommons mailing list
> >> Icommons at lists.ibiblio.org
> >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/icommons
> >
> > ---
> >
> > Dr. David M. Berry
> >
> > Room 412
> > Media and Communications Department
> > School of Arts
> > University of Wales Swansea
> > Swansea
> > SA2 8PP
> > Wales, UK
> >
> > Tel: x2633
> > Email: d.m.berry at swansea.ac.uk
> > Web: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/academic/Arts/berryd/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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