[Infowarrior] - Harvard Law School to Distribute Research for Free

[Richard Forno]

Harvard Law School to Distribute Research for Free (Update2)

By Brian Kladko

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTV432mbXYtY

May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard Law School will become the first U.S. law  
school to distribute professors' scholarly articles over the Internet  
for free, following a similar move by the university's arts and  
science faculty three months ago.

The 92-member law faculty, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, voted last  
week to post articles in an online repository that will be searchable  
by other Internet services, according to a statement today. Educators  
at other schools can freely provide the articles to students if the  
material isn't used for profit.

The vote advances the movement to make scholarship more widely  
available to individuals and institutions that sometimes pay thousands  
of dollars a year for a single academic journal subscription. Harvard  
Law's move also may challenge legal databases that collect law journal  
articles, such as Thomson Reuters Plc's Westlaw and Reed Elsevier  
Plc's Lexis-Nexis, said John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor who  
pushed for the motion.

``The economics of publishing, both in the scholarly field and in the  
trade press, is changing very quickly in the digital era,'' said  
Palfrey, who also is vice dean of library and information resources.  
``I think this is a period of transition, where we have to balance the  
interests of openness and access to scholarship against certain  
economic interests. There is that tension.''

The unanimous decision followed a Feb. 13 vote by Harvard's arts and  
sciences professors, the largest faculty at the university. Both  
policies encourage professors to post articles on a Harvard Web site,  
and allow professors who want to restrict publication to an academic  
journal to keep articles off the site.

Hundreds of Articles

``Our decision to embrace `open access' means that people everywhere  
can benefit from the ideas generated here at the law school,'' said  
Law School Dean Elena Kagan in today's statement.

Harvard Law's faculty members probably produce a few hundred articles  
a year, Palfrey said. The articles, like those from other faculties,  
are typically published in journals affiliated with a law school, many  
of which are student-run and receive some financial support from the  
institution, he said.

The school's decision doesn't threaten the Harvard Law Review, said  
Bob Allen, the journal's editor-in-chief. The publication already  
allows authors to post their articles on their own Web sites, and its  
subscription revenue has been shrinking for years as articles become  
more widely available online.

The Harvard Law Review gets an increasing share of revenue from  
selling articles to Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis, he said.

Scholars, and the people who read their work, will still look for the  
legitimacy conveyed by having a manuscript published in a journal,  
Allen said.

Navigating Literature

``There's so much scholarship being produced that you sort of need  
that indicator to help you navigate the literature,'' said Allen, 24,  
a second-year student from Atlanta. ``I think that's the role we'll  
continue to play. The name of the journal stands as backing for the  
veracity of sourcing and factual claims in the piece.''

Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with Thomson  
Reuters and with Lexis.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Kladko in Boston at bkladko at bloomberg.net 
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Last Updated: May 7, 2008 15:36 EDT