Reflections on the "Harvard Mandate"

On Tuesday, February 12th, the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) approved a motion that requires Harvard's FAS researchers to deposit their scholarly articles in an open access (OA) repository to be managed by the library. Faculty who wish to opt out can obtain a waiver, which would need to be requested for each instance. At this time, the mandate does not apply to Harvard's professional schools (such as Business, Law, Medicine, Divinity, Education, and the Kennedy School), though Harvard University's Librarian Robert Darnton intends to promote the idea widely. The mandate apparently applies only to scholarly articles and not at this time other types of faculty created works.

The required language (for example, in publisher agreements) that will enable authors to post to the repository now being created has been described as "a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license [for a faculty member] to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit." Faculty members will retain their copyrights in the articles and are free to publish in journals that will accept such a license.

Stuart Schieber, the computer science professor at Harvard who made the motion and has been advocating for some time, described the motivation as: "It should be a very powerful message to the academic community that we want and should have more control over how our work is used and disseminated." In a statement released following the vote, Shieber cited serials costs that have "risen to such astronomical levels," forcing cancellations and "reducing the circulation of scholars' works." He also noted that many publishers will not allow scholars to use and distribute their own work.

A few thoughts about the implications of the Harvard "mandate":

1. Harvard University will incur a moderate cost (creation of article repository infrastructure including technology, support, legal advice, and compliance management), along with some long-term benefit (extent of effect on teaching and learning transformation is so far unproven)

2. The PR factor has already been significant, as Harvard is the first leading US institution to take such action. The PR-visibility factor was initially promoted in Raym Crow's paper, "The Case for Institutional Repositories" (2002). In it, Crow posited that a principal purpose of the IR was to serve as a "tangible indicator" of an institution's quality and to demonstrate the relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the institution's visibility, status, and public value (administrative aggregation).

3. Faculty, generally very careful to assert their ownership over their own works (and court cases in the US have confirmed that faculty work in academia is not "work for hire," a concept reflected in most university ownership policies), have via this action given Harvard permission to utilize their works.

4. The mandate does not give to faculty Web posting rights that they did not mostly have from publishers already. That is, it appears that authors already have permission from 96+% of publishers to mount their own works (see SHERPA/RoMEO Project at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php); author action rather than publisher permission has been the barrier. However, the Harvard mandate and repository do force the issue on campus.

5. We can expect potential, though undefined, pressure on other institutions to follow suit.

6. This action adds to the growing pressure on publishers to adjust their business plans in important ways, as part of (1) an increasing practice on part of authors to put work up on the Web; and (2) a growing number of mandates; and (3) the general acceptance of "this is what you do on the Internet." These business adjustments are in a continuous state of evolution.

6. Version control and proper authority citation will become even messier than they already are!

7. In spite of the stated desire to impact on serial prices, this mandate is unlikely to have any effect. Prices are more likely related to growth in size of STM literature and the supporting services, structures, and value-adding that publishers of all sorts are providing.

8. In spite of the mandate, there will be no reduction in costs to universities; rather, as a result of various factors such as repository support, growing number of funder mandates and compliance issues, and the growing practice of research institutions to be asked to cover the costs of online publication through publisher options such as "open choice," "open access" or other means, the costs to research institutions will certainly increase. No library subscription dollars will be saved.

9. The argument that such online article repositories, particularly in STM, will benefit poor countries is not correct. At this time, most STM publishers do have "give-away" programs to developing nations. Through programs such as HighWire's, nearly 2 million articles are available without restrictions worldwide. United Nations programs such as HINARI, AGORA, and OARE, currently make nearly 8,000 peer reviewed journals in STM fields freely available to nations with a per capita income of under $1,000 per year. (A YouTube video describes HINARI/AGORA/OARE and their impact.)

In short, this mandate, with its high visibility, certainly adds to the growing perception that online content from academic scholars and researchers can be made freely available. While doing so, it leaves for all of us as many questions open and unanswered as we had prior to 12 February.