Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement 147
Vooch writes "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." I may not be smart enough to go to college, but at least I can pretend to have a Harvard eduction. I don't think that will be enough to get a gig as a Simpsons writer.
Nice of Them (Score:4, Insightful)
Faculty members can publish in any journal that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully, we'll be able to see some more of this sort of thing in the future.
Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
We provide, in the western world, a basic education free of charge to everybody. This is in order to impart basic life skills that everybody needs in order to contribute successfully to our society.
Does it need to stop there? Are you only allowed to learn inside a classroom? How absurd! Rather than restricting education to a cloistered few, is it not in the best interests of humanity to allow everybody to learn what they will, should they have the desire to learn?
Or are you hinting that you'd like to pay for my college tuition? I'd be mightily obliged; my email's in my profile if you'd like to make the arrangements that way.
Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that (Score:3, Insightful)
What about those journals (Nature and Science, maybe?) that do not allow this.
They'll just have to change their policy. I'm sure this is really what this whole policy is about. If enough research institutions make this a policy, the journals which have had so much control over controlling publication will have no other choice.
Re:Nice of Them (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd almost think their purpose was promoting the advancement of human knowledge.
Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. Knowing that an article got published in ACM's Transactions on Programming Languages is a great sign that it's a paper worth making time to read. I think it's terribly important that we somehow retain a set of reviewers who decide what paper are worth broad attention.
But aren't these reviewers unpaid? If so, they could just as well organize themselves outside of the context of some journal. I think all that's really missing at that point is getting a small editorial board to decide what topics are worth focusing on, etc. Of course, since academics' and researchers' careers are measured in terms of their publication history, there is some impedance to changing this system.
Completely OT: Atheists and Obama (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm an atheist (among other things), and I'll most likely vote for Mr. Obama. One of the things that I admire about him is that, even though he's confirmed he's a more-or-less Congregationalist Christian, he doesn't use his religion as his platform. The only time I've ever noticed him bring up his religion was in rebuttal to claims he was a Muslim. I don't care what religion he chooses to practice (or not practice)--religion is a personal choice, and has no place in politics. As long as he doesn't make political decisions based on faith-based ignorance, he's cool with me.
Huckabee, on the other hand...
Re:Nice of Them (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with Harvard's finances. In any case Harvard does not make money out of scholarly publications.
This is a coup against publishers, the likes of Elsevier and Springer. What Harvard is saying is that, as a condition of sponsoring research at Harvard, the results MUST be accessible in open form. Hence, when faculty transfer the copyright of their papers to the publishers (a step that happens each time a paper is published), a clause will have to be added that Harvard reserves the right to make the works available in an open access way.
This is great, and other universities are thinking the same (but acting with less courage).
This leaves open the point of why one must transfer copyright when publishing papers -- why would a license to use the content not be enough? But traditionally, faculty and researchers have been slaves to publishers. Harvard's decision is a sign that the balance of power is changing, due to the internet.
Re:Bullshit!! (Score:2, Insightful)
I beg to differ. Have you spoken to many Harvard undergraduates recently? There is good reason for the high price (and resultant status) of a Harvard education.
(No, I'm not a Harvard undergraduate/alum/whatever, but I have had to compete with them at a few engineering design competitions, and it's rough! If they aren't getting an education, I don't know where you'd get one!)
It's *BIG*! (Score:5, Insightful)
Junior faculty, in particular, are currently *forced* to publish in the "best" journal they can, with the bulk of those being the "sign it over" variety. To publish in a lesser journal is to risk tenure.
Now, suddenly, the University is providing a new list of top journals, and tenure will come from posting to the rest of those.
The academic publishing industry is a dinosaur in desperate need of elimination. It charges tens of thousands of dollars per school for journals that would be more useful as web sites--, not and available several months earlier. As it exists, journals are for the benefit of the publishing companies, not the world at large, academia, or the authors. The economic model is that the faculty write, are paid nothing, and the libraries pay huge fees to the publishing houses.
Will the publishers react to open up? I doubt it; they can't.
The *real* result of this will be top articles going to online journals, which will first rival and then displace the printed journals. This is a good thing for everyone except the publishing houses.
hawk, formerly junior faculty but now back in practice and paid well enough that *his* kids can go to school, too
Re:Faculty members can publish in any journal that (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why Science or Nature should get a pass.
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you wish to dispute that also?
It's easy to say "you're wrong"--but one thing I've learned over time is that in order to be taken seriously, one must do two things:
1. Provide substantiation for your opinion. Proof, in other words, why you're more correct than the other gent.
2. Stand behind your words. Take responsibility for what you say, and acknowledge any mistakes you make.
You seem to be having trouble with both. You've offered no substantiation--merely saying "you're wrong and unqualified." I've freely admitted I have no -official- qualifications, so the latter is redundant--and you've offered no contrary evidence, so the former is suspect. You furthermore post only as an Anonymous Coward, showing an unwillingness to stand behind your opinions. While anonymity itself does not invalidate an argument, it does not give any sort of confidence, either.
If you are demanding professional certification, why aren't you providing your own qualifications?
Re:But I already graduated (Score:2, Insightful)
I see the argument in other places many, many times (and, in fact, there's a 'documentary' by Ben Stein coming out that uses the same thing shortly): "Academia must be wrong because they're ignoring any controversial ideas in favor of their own status quo." This is discussed in the context of the evolution/ID nonsense, but leaving that particular 'controversy' aside, there are other considerations.
Both sides--I'll label them "Ivory Tower" and "Suspicious Rabble" for convenience--do have their points. Ivory Tower wants to ensure that only quality scholarship is available--that anything that gets published is as absolutely accurate (within the ability of humanity to make it so) as possible. Suspicious Rabble, on the other hand, having been denied access not only to the knowledge that the Ivory Tower is hoarding but also to the process by which such knowledge is adjudicated, becomes convinced that Ivory Tower is deliberately closing its eyes to anything that doesn't fit into the Tower's view of the cosmos.
What the Rabble does not understand, of course, is that the conservatism of the Tower is there for a reason--that without extensive substantiation; without proper evidence; without extensive preparations to ensure that the research, experiments, analysis, and conclusions are accurate; there exists a risk that a good, working model may be discarded in favor of an inferior model--that there would be a step backward.
What the Tower does not understand is that it is their very exclusivity that causes the Rabble to adopt these inaccurate and wrong conclusions. If the Rabble understood why, for your example, Safire is not taken seriously by the Tower, would they want to buy his books? If the Rabble understood why ID is nothing but a house of cards built to obscure a logical fallacy, would there be anyone who bothered to defend it?
Not to say that the conservative attitude of the Tower be relaxed entirely--one must always ensure that the research, experimentation, analysis, and the logic behind the conclusions is checked and checked again for validity. But too much secrecy, as you seem to advocate, will only hurt the Tower in the future. As you withdraw from the Rabble--as you continue to assume that the majority of the Rabble is incapable of understanding what you do--you make yourself irrelevant to the Rabble, and they will have no desire to be educated or to understand you.
How do you counter the mistaken assumptions of the Rabble, then? How do you avoid their veneering of shit with sycamore?
One way would be to make it easier to find these citations. As it is, the obstructions placed in the path of the common person to finding the substance of most articles actually lends -credence- to these very people who you wish to avoid endorsing: all they have to do is cite a paper that vaguely references something related in the abstract, and that very veneering has been accomplished, and for the most part cannot be effectively countered. You've made the situation worse.
Another way would be to do your own "science reporting"--that is, append to the abstracts of an article a plain-language abstract for folks like science reporters and casual readers who are not in-touch with the jargon of the particular discipline of the paper in question. In this way, you can pre-emptively avoid bad citations (and bad newspaper reporting, as well).
Continuing to keep knowledge exclusive and the purview of only a chosen few will lead only to the fall of the Tower. Allowing members of the Rabble some modicum of understanding--perhaps even allowing some members of the Rabble to become, as it were, Amateur Agents of the Tower, to continue the metaphor--will serve to help both the Tower and the Rabble come to a mutual understanding and to increase the quality of scholarship across the board.
tl;dr: Don't be a snotty bastard; it'll only hurt you worse.