Digital Foundations

NYT reports on a scheduled vote by Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty on whether to publish their work for free online.  All finished works would be available online through the University’s library. All scholars would have the option to opt-out of the automatic publishing.

“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”