The faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) voted overwhelmingly at its last faculty meeting to allow the university to make all faculty members' scholarly articles publicly available online. The resolution makes HGSE the fourth of Harvard's 10 schools to endorse open access to faculty research publications. The Faculties of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Kennedy School all passed similar policies in recent months.
"The field of education and the mission of libraries have always been aligned in efforts to bring knowledge to as many people as possible. With the open access resolution, the work of the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education will now be available to all -- especially those who seek to improve the quality of education worldwide," said John Collins, librarian of Gutman Library at HGSE.
As a result of the resolution, HGSE faculty will now provide their scholarly articles to the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication for deposit in an open access digital repository that is currently under development. When the repository launches later this year, the contents will be freely available to the public, unless an author chooses to embargo or block access. The policy makes rights sharing with publishers and self-archiving the default, while allowing faculty to waive Harvard's license on a case-by-case basis, at the author's discretion.
Professor Kurt Fischer said, "Educational researchers and leaders seek to share their knowledge and findings with educators, researchers, and anyone who is interested. Unfortunately, the current situation in publishing severely restricts access. The Open Access policy moves toward making writings available to anyone who can benefit from them."
Press contact:
Michael Rodman
Harvard Graduate School of Education
617-496-5037
Amy Brand
Office of Scholarly Communications
617-495-4089
As an educator of 35 years I say bravo.
Gee Tee
best-web-info.com
HI,
I think this is a big step for the body, which i see will be a big help to our society.. Giving the chance is great!
Million Thanks,
Jiel
Right on. For a lot of us in non-profits our orgs can't afford to pay for journals and articles and this opens up a whole resource area. Good on you!
I wonder how all this will now play out with budget cuts at the Harvard Library? Those are the folks that were to manage the system. Open access offers quiet a bit, but there are costs that need to be covered. Publishers have covered a lot of these costs. Will systems be able to survive in hard economic times when "non-essential" services have to be pared back?
This is great as many of the universities esp. in the developing countries are unable to provide access to journals due to lack of resources to pay for them.
Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.
Wanda
This is a fantastic new resources for alot of people including non-profits like Tara was talking about but also companies looking for educational material. This open source policy will be a huge benefit to the entire educational community! I look forward to browsing through what I once paid for!
Bruce