Harvard to post peer-reviewed research papers online
Summary: This week, Harvard began requiring all researchers to publish their findings in journals or other media that would allow for subsequent posting to an online repository. The Chronicle of Higher Education describes this new effort to make research findings more accessible than traditional print publications.
This week, Harvard began requiring all researchers to publish their findings in journals or other media that would allow for subsequent posting to an online repository. The Chronicle of Higher Education describes this new effort to make research findings more accessible than traditional print publications.
The policy will allow Harvard authors to publish in any journal that permits posting online after publication. According to Mr. Suber [an open-access activist with Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group in Washington], about two-thirds of pay-access journals allow such posting in online repositories.
The Harvard computer science professor who proposed the policy explained,
the decision “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.”
Unlike MIT's Open Courseware initiative which makes classroom materials available for free online, this policy only affects the publication of research findings at the university.
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Talkback
Contradiction?
the decision
[to take away authors' discretion about where to publish papers and how the papers may be provided to the public]
?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.?
Following this reasoning, confiscating papers on completion would give authors the greatest possible freedom.
Note, too, that what authors "want" is determined by a "very powerful message" received, and not by the authors. Who will not, of course, be asked how any given paper should be treated. If an author disagrees, there will be probably be resources for re-education available, or perhaps only a suggestion he make a career change.
Agreed, but...
Why should any author be against having their discoveries made available to the widest possible audience?