Institutional Repositories

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.

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.

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 which journal to publish in.

What follows below is a recommendation for a few small but crucial changes in the wording of the mandate. They are designed to prevent the copyright-retention requirement from compromising the deposit requirement (thereby causing the Harvard OA Mandate to fail, as the original NIH policy failed, until its flaws were corrected three years later).

First, here is the draft Harvard OA mandate as it now stands. [passages that are flagged for modification are in brackets]:

Text of 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 underscored passages. (Other universities may also omit the two indented clauses preceded by asterisk ** if they wish):

Proposed revision:

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 peer-reviewed draft 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.

**[COPYRIGHT-RETENTION 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.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum