Princeton University joined MIT and Harvard in adopting an open access policy for all scholarly publications.
At the most recent meeting of the Faculty of Princeton University, members voted unanimously to grant “The Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same.”
Translation?
Basically, professors are no longer allowed to give up all rights to their work when publishing, as some academic journals now require – especially in fields like English, history, and chemical engineering. Professors usually publish without expecting compensation, but journals still charge readers around $30 per article, as anyone who’s tried to do research off campus knows. The change would let the university make their work freely available.
While professors can request waivers to the policy if a publication refuses to budge, the faculty hopes that the policy will give them extra leverage to push to retain their rights. Professor Andrew Appel, a member of the committee studying open access, said the Provost is also planning to create a public repository for their work to make it more accessible.
So, why do you care?
It’s a win for the “information wants to be free” camp, but even if you’re not an open access advocate, you can still get excited about never again needing to pay for a Pequod version of any article by a Princeton faculty member.
Appel has the full report here.
LIKE ITS HARVARD MODEL, PRINCETON’S OPEN ACCESS POLICY NEEDS TO ADD AN IMMEDIATE-DEPOSIT REQUIREMENT, WITH NO WAIVER OPTION
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/844-guid.html
1. First, congratulations to Princeton University (my graduate alma mater!) for adopting an open access mandate: a copyright-reservation policy, adopted by unanimous faculty vote.
2. Princeton is following in the footsteps of Harvard in adopting the copyright-reservation policy pioneered by Stuart Shieber and Peter Suber.
4. I hope that Princeton will now also follow in the footsteps of Harvard by adding an immediate-deposit requirement with no waiver option to its copyright-reservation mandate, as Harvard has done.
5. The Princeton copyright-reservation policy, like the Harvard copyright-reservation policy, can be waived if the author wishes: This is to allow authors to retain the freedom to choose where to publish, even if the journal does not agree to the copyright-reservation.
6. Adding an immediate-deposit clause, with no opt-out waiver option, retains all the properties and benefits of the copyright-reservation policy while ensuring that all articles are nevertheless deposited in the institutional repository upon publication, with no exceptions: Access to the deposited article can be embargoed, but deposit itself cannot; access is a copyright matter, deposit is not.
7. Depositing all articles upon publication, without exception, is crucial to reaching 100% open access with certainty, and as soon as possible; hence it is the right example to set for the many other universities worldwide that are now contemplating emulating Harvard and Princeton by adopting open access policies of their own; copyright reservation alone, with opt-out, is not.
8. The reason it is imperative that the deposit clause must be immediate and without a waiver option is that, without that, both when and whether articles are deposited at all is indeterminate: With the added deposit requirement the policy is a mandate; without it, it is just a gentleman/scholar’s agreement.
[Footnote: Princeton’s open access policy is also unusual in having been adopted before Princeton has created an open access repository for its authors to deposit in: It might be a good idea to create the repository as soon as possible so Princeton authors can get into the habit of practising what they pledge from the outset…]
Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship