Movements for open archiving and dissemination of scholarly articles received a major boost when Harvard faculty voted to require deposit of all articles written by the Arts and Sciences faculty in Harvard’s own institutional repository. The faculty agreed to disseminate faculty research and scholarship more broadly by giving the University a worldwide, non-exclusive license to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. Authors retain copyright and are free to publish their work anywhere they like as long as the publisher will accept that copyright is subject to this prior license. The decision is a strong affirmation of the value of open access to academic research, both to the public and to the academy itself.

For more information and opinion on the decision by Harvard’s faculty see William Patry’s excellent summary along with commentary from Peter Suber’s Open Access Newsletter. The implementation of Harvard’s vote will be worth watching carefully for its impact on efforts to promote broader and more open dissemination of the scholarship of faculty and researchers.