An open access policy for scholarly articles was adopted by vote of the Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty on March 30, 2011, in keeping with its commitment to the dissemination of the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. (See full text of the policy.)

Participating in the Open Access Policy

Faculty participating in the GSD Open Access Policy should incorporate the following into their workflow with respect to scholarly articles:

• Deposit an electronic copy of the author’s final version of each scholarly article in the DASH repository no later than the date of publication or designate a proxy to make such deposits.
• Amend the publisher’s agreement, as needed, to retain the necessary copyright. Obtain an addendum form by logging in with Harvard ID and PIN.

Opting out of the Open Access Policy

• Faculty may choose to opt out of the GSD Open Access Policy by requesting waivers. Waivers will be granted automatically, upon request, on an article-by-article basis.
• To request a waiver, faculty should use the online Waiver Generator and log in with Harvard ID and PIN.

Scope of the Open Access Policy

• Applies only to scholarly articles.
• Applies to articles authored or co-authored by GSD faculty and completed after March 30, 2011 (except for articles for which the faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before that date).
• Grants Harvard a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to distribute scholarly articles for any noncommercial purpose. Faculty authors retain ownership and complete control in their writings, subject only to Harvard’s prior, nonexclusive license. Faculty can exercise their copyrights in any way they see fit, including transferring them to a publisher if they so desire. (However, if faculty authors do so, Harvard still retains its license and the right to distribute the article from the DASH repository.) See the Frequently Asked Questions of the Open Access Policy Guidelines from the Office for Scholarly Communications (OSC).
• Model Open Access Policy includes annotations with explanations that may be helpful. The language of the Model Open Access Policy is similar to the language of the GSD Open Access Policy.

Harvard Open Access Resources

Information for Harvard Authors

Office for Scholarly Communication

DASH, the University’s central, open-access repository

The Office for Scholarly Communication administers the DASH repository and provides information and support to Harvard faculty as they make decisions about publishing their scholarly works. The Frances Loeb Library facilitates implementation of the GSD Open Access Policy.