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MIT Backs Free Access to Scientific Papers

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 7 comments
Wired; By Alexis Madrigal 		Mail this story
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Scientific publishing might have just reached a tipping point, thanks to a new open access policy at MIT. Following a more limited open-access mandate at Harvard, the legendary school's faculty voted last week to make all of their papers available for free on the web, the first university-wide policy of its sort. Hal Abelson, who spearheaded the effort, said that these agreements went beyond providing a repository for papers, they changed the power dynamics between scientific publishers and researchers. "What's important here is that it's giving the university a formal role in how publications happen," Abelson said. "Some of the faculty said, 'You're calling this an open-access resolution but actually the way to think of it is as a collective bargaining agreement.'"

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Comments (7)

TxtEdMacs ·
for a paper published after I left a university, I have not found a way to view this paper published by a limited imprint. Even a friend at a major university was unable to get a borrowed copy for me ...
ColonelPanik ·
Holding knowledge hostage is a crime! The "Scholarly Journal" scam has cost the universities and students huge amounts of money.

MIT is leading education into the future.
bigg ·
"Holding knowledge hostage is a crime!"

It should be. Our tax dollars support a lot of the locked-up-tight research. And the Baye-Dole Act lets them use our tax dollars to do research that leads to patents.
jacog ·
Reminds me a of a buzzphrase that used to do the rounds back in the day: "Information wants to be free"
ColonelPanik ·
jacog: Don't we all want to be free?

Information wants to be free and accessible!
gus3 ·
I don't want to be free. I want an hourly rate. I still have bills to pay.
herzeleid ·
Larry wall once said that on the contrary, information wants to be valuable.

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