Open access and author rights: questioning Harvard’s open access policy

Patrick H Alexander

doi:10.1629/uksg.525

Abstract

Harvard’s open access (OA) policy, which has become a template for many institutional OA policies, intrinsically undermines the rights of scholars, researchers, authors and university staff, and it adulterates a principal tenet of open access, namely, that authors should control the intellectual property rights to their material. Assessing the implications of Harvard’s open access policy in the light of Peter Suber’s landmark book, <em>Open Access</em>, as well as resources from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and Title 17 of the United States Code (USC), this article uncovers an intellectual ‘landgrab’ by universities that may at times not work in the interest of the author or creator of research and weakens the appeal of open access.

Highlights

‘open access (OA) isn’t an attempt to reduce authors’ rights over their work
OA depends on author decisions and requires authors to exercise more rights or control over their work than they are allowed to exercise under traditional publishing contracts
One OA strategy is for authors to retain some of the rights they formerly gave publishers, including the right to authorize OA

Summary

Introduction

‘OA isn’t an attempt to reduce authors’ rights over their work. On the contrary, OA depends on author decisions and requires authors to exercise more rights or control over their work than they are allowed to exercise under traditional publishing contracts.

Results

Conclusion