Harvard Becomes First Law School to Commit to Universal Open Access to its Faculty's Scholarship

Harvard announced yesterday that the law school faculty has unanimously voted to make each faculty member's scholarship available available online for free, becomming the first law school to commit to universal open access:

Each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles. More specifically, each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy.

Press and blogosphere coverage:

• Bloomberg
• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Harvard Crimson
• Info/Law
• Law School Innovation
• National Law Journal
• Open Access News