** Cross-Posted **

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:49:52 +0000
From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Harvard Adopts 38th Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate

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 Provost'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 Dean’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 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.

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 Provost’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
     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.

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.html
     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/