Advocates of open access to the scholarly literature won an important battle this week when the faculty of Harvard’s arts and science college agreed to grant the university a license to distribute all of their publications freely over the Internet. The university has committed to the creation of a repository that will make that information available, presumably in perpetuity.
This is the latest round in a long series of encounters over open access that has pitted government agencies and advocates of free access against publishers, both in the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds. Many scientific societies fund at least part of their activities from the income derived from their publications, so decisions like those made at Harvard have the potential to significantly impact those organizations.
No doubt we’ll be hearing much more about this in the months and years to come. It’s the Insider’s guess that the world of scholarly publication is about to undergo a revolution….
Read more at… Harvard to collect, disseminate scholarly articles for faculty — The Harvard University Gazette
Filed under: Harvard, faculty, technology
