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» Harvard Proposal to Publish Scholarly Research Free on the Internet

Harvard’s faculty are considering whether to publish most of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences scholarship online, making the work available to the public free of cost.  The program would be an opt-out program, contrasting the current system that allows professors to publish online if the affirmatively choose to do so. 

The debate surrounding the issue has focused on a variety of areas:  Will the scholarly journals, dependent on subscription fees, be run out of business?  Would that have a negative impact on the academic community?  Would journals accept articles that are already available free of charge?  Will the quality of scholarship suffer if articles are published with an inadequate level of peer review?  On the other hand, freeing up some of a university library’s budget allows libraries to purchase other resources, helping younger academics get the materials they need.

Free academic research seems great to me.  One of the great things about being in school is having access to journal articles freely.  Of course, this sort of policy is unlikely to affect the Harvard libraries too much, but most schools don’t have the endowments equal to 1% of all assets held by charitable and educational organizations in the entire country (It’s true!  My tax professor said so!).  Allowing scholarly research to be available to students and academics at other universities seems likely to even the playing field in terms of resources, at least to a small extent. (NYT) ~Amy