June 30, 2008

Stanford's Education School Requires Open Access

Open-access advocates predicted that the move last February by Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and, later, by its Law School to require free online access to all faculty members’ scholarly articles would prompt other universities to adopt similar policies. The movement has not exactly snowballed, but another institution did just join in.

Last week Stanford University’s School of Education revealed that it would require faculty members to allow the university to place their published articles in a free online database.

The school’s faculty passed a motion unanimously — just as Harvard’s two faculties had — on June 10. A faculty member and open-access advocate, John Willinsky, made the policy public last week at the International Conference on Electronic Publishing, in Toronto. A video of his presentation is available. —Lila Guterman

Comments

1. There are plenty of open-access e-journals now. Those who wish to make their work available through these can do so; there is no need to force this on those who feel otherwise.

   — TRB    Jun 30, 03:51 PM    #

2. I am far from sure that such a policy, if tested in court, would pass legal muster. And any attempt to enforce it—e.g. by denying tenure to faculty who publish in the “wrong” journals—seems certain to land Stanford in a world of messy litigation.

   — Gustave    Jun 30, 05:41 PM    #

3. This policy, like Harvard’s, has an opt out provision. In other words, any faculty member can request a waiver for a specific article that exempts it from the policy. Waiver requests are automatically granted.

   — RAE    Jul 1, 07:36 AM    #

4. Advocates for open access point to the public good mission of the university – since electronic publishing costs so little – there is no longer a need to lock the work into a publishing scheme which denies access to researchers who can’t pay. The effect is that the latest research isn’t available in developing nations.

   — mp    Jul 1, 10:43 AM    #

5. The policy doesn’t require faculty to submit to certain journals, but merely to deposit copies of their manuscripts in an open-access repository. It’s compatible with publishing in any journal. Journals could refuse to publish authors working under such a policy but (1) no journals have taken this position yet in response to the Harvard policy, and (2) Harvard and Stanford offer opt-outs precisely to allow faculty to publish in journals which would otherwise balk.

   — Peter Suber    Jul 1, 10:47 AM    #

6. All these policies do is set the default paradigm to be open access; to publish in a non-open access method takes more effort.

   — Stephen    Jul 1, 10:58 AM    #

7. I’m confused. My field has only one or two open access journals; all the rest are closed. I always post “penultimate draft” versions on my website, but usually my copyright agreement with the journal prohibits me from posting a free final draft anywhere online. Is the idea that these repositories do not violate the typical closed-access journal agreements?

   — Patricia    Jul 1, 11:18 AM    #

8. This excellent article (open access) by a copyright lawyer may make this issue clearer. http://www.policybandwidth.com/doc/20080523-PublishANDPerishFinal.pdf

   — Cy Dillon    Jul 1, 02:27 PM    #

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