MIT Adopts an Open-Access Policy
Thursday, March 19th, 2009 by Hal AbelsonA few hours ago, the MIT faculty adopted a resolution that makes our scholarly articles freely and openly available to the entire world, though the MIT DSpace Institutional Repository. The policy applies to all of MIT:
Passed by Unanimous Vote of the Faculty, March 18, 2009
The Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to MIT 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, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. 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 Provost or Provost’s designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by the author, who informs MIT of the reason.
To assist the Institute in distributing the scholarly articles, as of the date of publication, each Faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the Provost’s Office in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the Provost’s Office.
The Provost’s Office will make the scholarly article available to the public in an open- access repository. The Office of the Provost, in consultation with the Faculty Committee on the Library System will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the Faculty.
The policy is to take effect immediately; it will be reviewed after five years by the Faculty Policy Committee, with a report presented to the Faculty.
The Faculty calls upon the Faculty Committee on the Library System to develop and monitor a plan for a service or mechanism that would render compliance with the policy as convenient for the faculty as possible.
I chaired the committee that drafted the resolution and led faculty discussions on it throughout the fall. So I’m particularly gratified that the vote was unanimously in favor. In the words of MIT Faculty Chair Bish Sanyal, the vote is ‚Äúa signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas.”
Our resolution was closely modeled on similar ones passed last February by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and by the Harvard Law School, also passed by unanimous vote. Stanford’s School of Education did the same, as did Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government just last Monday.
Harry blogged last month about the execrable “Fair Copyright in Research Act” introduced by Rep. Conyers of Michigan, which would repeal the National Institute of Health mandate on open-access publishing and forbid government agencies from imposing similar mandates. This act is harmful to the progress of science and should be scuttled. Now that there are unanimous votes supporting open access by faculty at world-leading institutions, Rep. Conyers should recognize what everyone else does, and deflate his ill-conceived trial balloon.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
[…] by the web2.0 mentality, which emphasizes openness, collaboration, and sharing of resources.[via Blown to Bits.] Tags: education, […]
March 20th, 2009 at 9:20 am
[…] pay exhorbitant license fees for software and administration tools.¬† But MIT just decided to open up its scholarly articles for free while people like Kevin Donovan and CNDLS at Georgetown are pushing free tools and OpenCourseWare […]
March 20th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
This is remarkable. This goes hand in hand with the MIT Open Courseware site. Now, if we could only develop a semantic service that could link this open data, we would really be on to something. Its a matter of time really… I just hope i have enough to see it happen.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
[…] MIT faculty makes scholarly articles freely and openly available to the entire world. […]
March 21st, 2009 at 6:21 am
[…] their scientific works for publishing it in an open access repository (see Open Access News). In a note on this decision, the chairman of the drafting committee Hal Abelson explains the context of this decision: […]
March 21st, 2009 at 6:17 pm
This seems to be an entirely natural progression; many MIT professors already make their scholarly articles available on personal websites, and open courseware works towards the same ends. Students will certainly benefit from increased access to articles, and this will doubtless result in more citations. I’m just curious if MIT will hear any grumblings from professors at the additional workload!
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:31 am
[…] open access, open access, open access publishing, open archive, open research by Arunn We get to hear the good news aptly from one of the earliest crusaders, Prof. Hal Abelson: A few hours ago, the MIT faculty […]
March 25th, 2009 at 9:51 am
[…] makes most MIT classes lecture notes, exams, and videos freely available on the web, MIT is now making all published faculty articles freely available at MIT’s Digital Research […]
March 25th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
[…] Now MIT has joined the ranks. In a unanimous vote, the MIT faculty has decided that all future publications must be made available for for open access. […]
March 26th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
It would help immensely if somebody could compile a list of major journals that are and are not compatible with this policy.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
[…] at MIT have voted to require that all academic publications be open-access. More specifically, the policy requires that when submitting an article to a journal publisher, authors must grant MIT a license […]
April 7th, 2009 at 7:55 am
I may not understand what they write but these guys are legends, without access to knowledge we are all just monkeys scrabbling in the dust.. thank you..
February 15th, 2010 at 5:33 am
[…] get to hear the good news aptly from one of the earliest crusaders, Prof. Hal Abelson: A few hours ago, the MIT faculty […]
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:10 am
It’s too cool and beautiful to develop and motivate, build up character.This is the coolest website and stories that i have ever read…its useful for me as im a lecturer and always motivate my students with these publised stories…thank you …and waiting for plenty more…
December 2nd, 2010 at 8:55 am
If there were an article marketing strategy that I wish to be passed on to each and every article marketer out there, let it be this one: implement subscriber forms in your signature box.
January 3rd, 2011 at 12:48 pm
A strong pint has been made. Now it’s everyone’s duty to examine it and choose to appropriate the perspective or filter it out and walk away believing it’s good to be true.
January 6th, 2011 at 10:39 am
Don’t believe anything you’re said and hear. It’s better to follow your instinct that’s, hopefully, molded by experience. Still, this is solid information that shouldn’t be neglected.