Boston University Discuss Open Access

In the University's alumni magazine this quarter, Boston University discuss their recently launched open access research repository under a title "Research Wants to be Free":

While most published scholarly work is copyrighted and distributed by subscription-based journals, an open-access system allows an article or data to be shared as widely and easily as possible with both the public and potential collaborators who might build on one another’s work. The movement began a few years ago among university librarians unsettled by ever-rising subscription costs and emboldened by the promise of the Internet. It quickly spread to university faculty and has since spawned a bur­geoning library of open-access journals and institutional repositories. In Feb­ruary, Boston University moved to the forefront of the movement when the faculty unanimously voted to establish the nation’s first university-wide open-access archive.

The archive will be a free, search­able Web catalogue of BU scholarship ranging from neuroscience research to folk dance videos. Faculty who opt to use the archive can submit a journal article, a dissertation, or any other piece of scholarship, and material that is submitted will be made available to anyone for noncommercial use.