Johannah S. Cornblatt and Samuel P. Jacobs, Faculty Meetings Stay Off the Air, Harvard Crimson, October 17, 2007. This article covers several topics aired at a recent Harvard faculty meeting. This excerpt is all that it has to say about the proposed OA policy:
[The Harvard Faculty of Arts of Sciences] discussed ways to combat the skyrocketing prices of scholarly journals in order to increase access to their ideas.
A committee spearheaded by Provost Steven E. Hyman proposed a set of measures to promote free and open access to scholarly articles.
“It gives the faculty the opportunity to democratize knowledge, much in the spirit of President Faust’s inaugural address,” said Harvard’s new University Library chief, Robert C. Darnton ’60.
According to Darnton, a scholar of the history of the book, prices for some journals have increased to tens of thousands of dollars, altering libraries’ purchasing habits and suppressing the demand for monographs and other writing.
Some professors worried the University’s open-access policy would put journals out of business, limiting outlets for publication.
“We might be shooting ourselves and our young colleagues in the foot,” Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies J. Lorand Matory ’82 said....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
