In his opinion piece criticizing the open access (OA) policies at Harvard University, Patrick Alexander makes several factual errors about the policies themselves and Harvard’s experience under them. In response, I discuss several relevant facts about Harvard OA policies, among them that the policies were adopted by faculty votes, not imposed by administrators; that under the policies, faculty only grant Harvard nonexclusive rights to new faculty articles, not exclusive rights or full copyright; that the policy-created Harvard OA license is merely a default that authors can easily waive for any given article; that the policies do not hinder Harvard faculty in publishing and do not limit their freedom to publish in the venues of their choice; and that the policies give Harvard faculty more rights, not fewer rights, over their own work than they typically get from their publishing contracts.
Note
2048-7754 (Online) This resource was extracted from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Source of Description
Crossref
Series
Insights: The UKSG Journal Volume 34, no. 1, 2021.