February 12, 2008
Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement
http://chronicle.com/news/article/3943/harvard-faculty-adopts-open-access-requirement

Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy  
this evening that requires faculty members to allow the university to  
make their scholarly articles available free online.

Peter Suber, an open-access activist with Public Knowledge, a  
nonprofit group in Washington, said on his blog that the new policy  
makes Harvard the first university in the United States to mandate  
open access to its faculty members’ research publications.

Stuart M. Shieber, a professor of computer science at Harvard who  
proposed the new policy, said after the vote in a news release that  
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.”

The new policy will allow faculty members to request a waiver, but  
otherwise they must provide an electronic form of each article to the  
provost’s office, which will place it in an online repository.

The policy will allow Harvard authors to publish in any journal that  
permits posting online after publication. According to Mr. Suber,  
about two-thirds of pay-access journals allow such posting in online  
repositories. —Lila Guterman

...

Text of the motion (unammended?) from
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~secfas/February_2008_Agenda.pdf

   On behalf of the Provost’s Committee on Scholarly Publishing,  
Professor S. Shieber will move:

   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: 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. 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.

   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.