Facultad de Artes y Ciencias de Harvard vota a favor del acceso abierto

En un mundo ideal y justo esto es lo que debería estar pasando en todas las Universidades:

The professors unanimously decided that they would no longer automatically turn over their copyright to publishers, thus allowing them or the university to publish the work online for free. The new rules contain an opt-out waiver for researchers wishing to stick with the old way of doing business, but many professors are ready to embrace it.

Ayer los profesores de la Facultad de Artes y Ciencias de la Universidad  de Harvard votaron unánimemente a favor de no ceder  automáticamente sus derechos de autor a las casas publicadores para permitir que sus artículos puedan accederse gratuitamente. Las expresiones del Director de las Bibliotecas de Harvard antes de que se considerara la moción, resumen muy bien el asunto:

The motion…represents an opportunity to reshape the landscape of learning. A shift in the system for communicating knowledge has created a contradiction at the heart of academic life. We academics provide the content for scholarly journals. We evaluate articles as referees, we serve on editorial boards, we work as editors ourselves, yet the journals force us to buy back our work, in published form, at outrageous prices. Many journals now cost more than $20,000 for a year’s subscription. The spiraling cost of journals has inflicted severe damage on research libraries, creating a ripple effect: in order to purchase the journals, libraries have had to reduce their acquisitions of monographs; the reduced demand among libraries for monographs has forced university presses to cut back on the publication of them; and the near impossibility of publishing their dissertations has jeopardized the careers of a whole generation of scholars in many fields. It would be naïve to assume that a positive vote by the FAS on February 12 would force publishers to slash their prices. But by passing the motion we can begin to resist the trends that have created so much damage.

¡Bravo por este grupo de profesores que están consciente de su responsabilidad social como científicos y que están dando un paso importante para cambiar el orden de las cosas! Ahora le corresponde a otras universidades unirse a este movimiento.