Harvard Law School Faculty Vote Unanimously for Open Access

The faculty of the Harvard Law School has voted unanimously to make articles authored by faculty members available in an open online repository. This is the first law school to commit to open access for its authors’ work.

As reported in the Harvard Law School news, Dean of the Law School Elena Kagan explains the motivation of the vote as a “decision to embrace ‘open access'” that “means that people everywhere can benefit from the ideas generated here at the Law School.”

“The acceptance of open access ensures that our faculty’s world-class scholarship is accessible today and into the future,” reports John Palfrey, the Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and Vice Dean of library and information resources, in the same news story.

This vote follows that of the Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences, which adopted a similar mandate in February 2008, also by a unanimous vote.

For more information, see stories in:

Harvard Law School news

Peter Suber’s Open Access News

And, for summaries of what MIT faculty are saying and doing in relation to open access, see:

Podcasts with MIT Faculty on Scholarly Publishing and Open Access

MIT Faculty taking action for open access