Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Dr. Stuart Shieber, Director of Harvard's Office of Scholarly Communication, addresses Caltech campus

In February 2008, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences unanimously approved a policy stating that faculty members grant to Harvard permission to make their articles freely available to the public. Harvard thereby became the first U.S. university to explicitly establish an open access policy for the publications of its faculty. As Director of the new Office of Scholarly Communication, Stuart Shieber is charged with administering the policy and other programs to provide the broadest possible access to the scholarly output of the university. Dr. Shieber came to Caltech on March 26th to discuss the background to the Harvard faculty motion and its implementation, as well as other initiatives to foster change in the scholarly publishing system. His talk was videotaped by Caltech Digital Media Services and can be accessed through its catalog or through a direct link here.