Harvard SEAS Newsletter Winter 2010

8/14/2019 Harvard SEAS Newsletter Winter 2010

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www.seas.harvard.edu

Uncovering Open AccessBy Michael Patrick Rutter & James Clyde Sellman

winter 2010

Topics


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to the general public,

doing science is all aboutdiscovery. but in truth,

thats only hal the picture.

consider the experience o an

obscure nineteenth-century

augustinian monk...

rom 1856 to 1863, gregor

mendel cultivated and

observed 29,000 pea plants

and managed to unlock some

o the secrets o heredity,

including the concepts o

dominant and recessive traits.


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In 1865,Mendel presented his ndingsas a two-part lecture, Experiments on Plant

Hybridization, beore the tiny Natural History

Society o Brnn (present-day Brno, Czech

Republic). A year later, he published his nd-

ings in the societys Proceedings, o which 115

copies are known to have been distributed.

With that, his painstaking work disappeared

virtually without a traceor 35 years. In sci-

entic terms, an eon. Biologists struggled on,

ruitlessly seeking to explain heredity through

blending theories or with Darwins earnest but

wrongheaded notion o pangenesis. At last,

in 1900, Mendels work was rediscovered and

helped spark the modern science o genetics.

The ate o Mendels research is a sharp

reminder that aside rom discoveryi.e.,

the ndingsscience is also emphatically

about dissemination, that is, access to (and

application o) those ndings. Open access

seeks, through the power o the Internet, to

make scholarly materials reely available to

the world. No passwords. No subscription ees.

And today, it is perhaps the hottest fashpoint

in science publicationwith Harvard, and an

unlikely rebrand named Stuart Shieber 81,

right in the thick o things.

With the ability to watchlectures from courses likeCS 50 on mobile devices,the role print plays in astudents life is changing.

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an seas computer scientist and tireless advocate

o open access, crated an open-access policy or

scholarship that the harvard aculty o arts and

sciences (as) adopted, unanimously, in ebruary

2008. thoughtul, sot-spoken, almost serene, he

hardly seems suited to the role o revolutionary.

Shieber, an SEAS computer scientist and tire-

less advocate o open access, crated an open-

access policy or scholarship that the Harvard

Faculty o Arts and Sciences (FAS) adopted,

unanimously, in February 2008. Thoughtul,

sot-spoken, almost serene, he hardly seems

suited to the role o revolutionary. RichardPoynder, an astute observer o the chang-

ing landscape o journalism and publishing,

suggested in his blog that this poster child

or open access might lack the necessary grit

to push the movement orward. Undeterred,

Shieber keeps on pushing. The heart o his

proposal: Each Faculty member grants to the

President and Fellows o Harvard College per-

mission to make available his or her scholarlyarticles and to exercise the copyright in those

articles. Dont be ooled by the matter-o-act

language: this is pure dynamite. It grabbed

headlines and roiled the Internet, hailed by

some as bold and visionary even as a shot

heard round the academic world.

While other universities open-access policies

had been premised on individual aculty

members opting in, in Harvards policy, the

presumption is that aculty will make their

work reely available, unlessor a given

publicationa aculty member opts out. Ac-

cording to Peter Suber, a leading proponent

o open access and currently a visiting ellow

at the Law Schools Berkman Center or

Internet and Society, its the best university

policy anywhere. A newly created Oce or

Scholarly Communications (OSC), headed

by Shieber, was tasked with administering the

policy, which includes archiving o publica-

tions in a central repository, known as DASH,

or Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard.

But why all the uss? Hasnt the Internet

already put worlds o knowledge just a mouse-

click away? Shieber points out that, contrary

to conventional wisdom, academics access

to relevant scholarly inormation is actually

decreasing. The problem isnt with the technol-

ogy or disseminating knowledge but ratherwith the increasingly inability o institutions

and individuals to pay or access. Harvards

policy seems almost elegant in its simplic-

ity. Under the new policy, Suber explains,

aculty members retain some o the rights

they ormerly gave to publishers, and they use

those rights to authorize open access.

For academic publishers, it was an unprec-edented shot across the bow. Moreover, the

School o Education and the Law School

quickly adopted similar policies. And on

September 15, Cornell University, Dartmouth

College, MIT, and the University o Caliornia

at Berkeley all joined Harvard in a general

compact to support open-access publishing

by providing administrative, technical, and

monetary support. Change is in the air, but

where is it headedand what does it portend?

To understand the controversy over open

access you need to untangle a complex back-

story, one that involves the long history o

the academy, the rise o scholarly publishing,

and the ederal unding o research since the

Second World Warwith side trips into the

rise o the Internet and the changing role o

libraries. Even human (or, at least, aculty)

nature gures into the mix. Its complicated

but essential to understanding where we are

and where were likely to be headed.

Shie

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Topics | Winter 2010

ber,Movable type breachesthe ivory tower

Prior to the Enlightenment, the university

was a very dierent place rom todays research-

centered institution. Medieval universities,

such as Oxord (ca. 1167), had a ocus that

was largely religious, and or centuries their

eorts at dissemination likewise stressed

religion: Harvard, or example, was ounded

in 1636 mainly or the purpose o training

ministers. But gradually, under the infuence

o humanist principles that emerged during

the Renaissance, the university began a meta-

morphosis that would ultimately yield todays

modern research institution. And publishinglay at the heart o the transormation.

Oxord University Press (OUP) was one o the

very earliest modern academic publishers. As

the OUP website explains, it emerged as part

o the inormation technology revolution o

the late teenth century, which began with

the invention o printing rom movable type.

Lead letters, tucked into wooden shadowbox-es. Theres something charming about linking

the digital revolution back to a collection o

smudged metal blocks. But compare the ardu-

ous task o hand-copying and illuminating a

manuscript with the relative ease o setting

(and editing) type, and suddenly it makes

sense as a game-changer.

Moreover, with the widespread adoption o

modern printing, the gates o academia began

to crack open. Universities began by publish-

ing Bibles and other religious works but soon

the scope o their activity began to expand,

diversiying into dictionaries, biographies,music, and journals. Universities learned that

to preserve the knowledge o their aculty,

they needed to disseminate it: knowledge

and access to knowledge went hand in hand.

Thus universities also turned to publishing

academic materials, and by the eighteenth

century, many were publishing their own

research journals.

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In contrast, commercial publishers entered

the scholarly landscape more gradually. Then

as now, commercial publishing was highly

competitive, and publishers, highly risk-

averse. In a perceptive essay on American

university presses, Peter Givler observed that

leaving the publication o scholarly, highly

specialized research to the commercial mar-ketplace would be, in eect, to condemn it

to languish unseen. Commercial publishers,

however, had the necessary distributional mus-

cle. Despite the growth o university presses

and the burgeoning o scientic activity,

research ndings continued to be surprisingly

inaccessible. Well into the nineteenth century,

much o the exchange o scientic inorma-

tion took place behind closed doorsinVictorian lounges o members-only organiza-

tions, like the Royal Society in England, or in

the growing number o local natural history

or scientic societies. Though many o the

local societies published Proceedings,they and

their publications actually limited access to

research ndingsas with Mendel and the

115 known copies o the 1866 Proceedings o the

Natural History Society o Brnn.

Such eorts at least refected an awareness

o the need to disseminate knowledge. In

the United States, or example, the Ameri-

can Association or the Advancement o

Science (AAAS) was ounded in 1848. And

the Lawrence Scientic School at Harvard

(the progenitor o SEAS) was established

in 184647. In a letter to the University, Ab-

bott Lawrencewhose git unded the newschoolvoiced his concern that we have

been somewhat neglectul in the cultivation

and encouragement o the scientic portion

o our national economy. Among those

neglecting the nations scientic enterprise

were, with ew exceptions, publishers. But

by the late nineteenth century, commercial

scholarly publishing began to emerge in

something approaching its modern sense.In 1869, or example, publisher Alexander

Macmillan ounded Naturein Britain. (For

some time, it survived mainly as a personal

labor o love: according to the Naturewebsite,

Macmillan tolerated a loss-making venture

or three decades.)

In the United States, Science Magazine(later

simplyScience), played a similar role as a

commercial journal or broad-based scien-

tic knowledge. And, like Nature, it aced

economic challenges. Backed by Thomas

Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, the

journal began rolling o the presses in 1880.

But it barelysurvived a series o nancialcrises beore gaining a measure o stability by

partnering with the nascent AAAS. Scienceand

Natureelevated, even liberated, scholarly com-

munication, presenting a broad overview o

discoveries to anyone willing to pay the then

relatively small subscription ee. Moreover,

many early commercial scholarly publishers,

like Macmillan, valued the dissemination o

knowledge as well as prot-making.

But whats the relevance o Victorian publish-

ing eorts to open-access scholarship? The is-

sues that were present at the outset o modern

scholarship and scholarly publishinghow

to distribute and archive knowledge and, no

less important, how to pay or ithavent

changed. Theyre the same challenges that

we conront today. From hand-illuminated,

gilt-edged manuscripts to lead type and steam-powered presses to silicon and bits and bytes,

the issue has always been accesswho has it,

what does it cost, and is it sucient?

Commercial publishers

tiptoe onto the scene

despite the growth o university

presses and the burgeoning o scientifc

activity, research fndings continued to

be surprisingly inaccessible.

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The Gordon McKay Libraryat SEAS consists of120,000 volumes and over600 subscription journals.Photo by Eliza Grinnell.


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By the latter hal o the twentieth century

as scientic enterprise and college and univer-sity enrollments burgeonedit appeared that

researchers and publishers had achieved a

lasting partnership. Much o the credit, ironi-

cally, goes to the Second World War. The war

highlighted the strategic importance not just

o science but o access to scientic inorma-

tion. Early on, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and

Prime Minister Winston Churchill reached

an inormal agreement that the United Statesand Great Britain would share (at no cost) any

scientic development o potential military

value. The ederal government also collabo-

rated as never beore with universities and

the private sector, above all in the Manhattan

Project and the building o the atomic bomb

but also in a host o other developments in-

cluding radar, sonar, synthetic rubber, nylon,

the proximity use, and napalm (developed

in 194243 by a Harvard team headed by

chemistry proessor Louis F. Fieser). This ed-

eral engagement in scientic research didnt

end with peacetime; indeed, it continued to

expand.

Thus, Edwin Purcell, Gerhard Gade University

Proessor,Emeritus,and co-winner o the 1952

Nobel Prize in Physics, was instrumental in

developing the principles o nuclear magneticresonance (NMR). In the coming decades,

the applied sciences continued to blossom. At

Harvard alone, Harold Thomas, Jr., whose last

position was as Gordon McKay Proessor o

Civil and Sanitary Engineering, spearheaded

the amed Harvard Water Program; Ivan

Sutherland conducted research that resulted

in the rst head-mounted display, one o the

rst attempts at virtual reality; and the Univer-sity became an early node on the ARPANET,

the precursor o the Internet.

Taking advantage o the bustling research

activity, economies o scale oered byadvances in printing technology, and their

well-established editorial and production

skills, commercial publishers now seized on

science as a viable, paying venture. New elds

blossomedcomputer science, cognitive sci-

ence, neuroscienceeach accompanied by

the requisite specialty journals. In many ways,

publishers (and particularly the editors o

such journals) joined academics as partners inthe scholarly enterprise. Faculty members pro-

vided the content; publishers lined up volun-

teer peer-reviewers, arranged or promotion

and distribution, and helped hone and polish

the manuscripts. Indeed, scholarly publishers

in many respects helped to shape elds. They

generally also demanded that authors cede

their entire copyright interest. (Publishers,

however, still pay nothing or these rights.)

The partnership was seen as analogous to

the role o art museums. I people wanted to

see the paintings, they had to pay to enter.

And i artists wanted others to see their art,

they needed to entrust that work to the gallery

or museum. Given the small number o sub-

scribers and the high quality o the value-add-

ed editorial work, the cost o access seemed

justied. And beore the rise o instantonline publishing, how else could academics

circulate their work in a orm more durable

than an oral presentation? Particularly in the

last 20 years, Shieber says, demand has been

inelastic, and [the publishers] clearly took

strong advantage o that. Which was ne as

ar as academics were concerned: they never

really knew the direct costs because university

libraries picked up the tab.

Scholars and publishersa partnership in peril

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Unortunately, or both academics and

publishers, the honeymoon was short-lived.Well beore the current economic storm, the

pricing model or scholarly publication was

beginning to break down. Publishers charged

ever-higher subscription ees. (Institutional

online subscriptions to journals like Brain Re-

searchcan now run as high as $20,000 a year.)

Libraries and universities bridled at the rising

costs but initially did little to push back. While

individual institutions might negotiate betteror modied deals with publishers, overall,

libraries have ound it a losing game.

For example, in 2007 the Max Planck Institute

stopped subscribing to Springers journals in

protest o the high cost, but, as one version

o the story goes, researchers demanded the

return o their journal collections. A year later

the Institute resubscribed ater negotiating

a time-limited experimental mix o openaccess and subscription models with Springer.

Under the agreement, all authors rom Max

Planck gained access to 1200 journals and had

the costs waived or Springers Open Choice

program that oers authors to have their

journal articles made available with ull open

access in exchange or payment o a basic

ee (article processing charge). A sign o

progress or sure, but a limited one as MaxPlanck still had to oot a substantial bill (the

nancial terms were not disclosed) and other

institutions and readers remain on the hook

or substantial subscription ees, as the vast

majority o Springers content remains locked.

In act, prohibitive subscription costs and,

more recently, budget cuts have orced manylibraries to permanently cut back on journal

subscriptions, online and print. Even in the

best o times, Harvard (which maintains one

o the largest libraries in the world) hasnt

been able to subscribe to every journal. Today,

however, the situation is signicantly worse.

One problem, explains Martha Marce

Wooster, head o SEASs Gordon McKay

Library, is the lack o any algorithm a librar-ian can use to determine what journals to

keep or cut, whether based on price or need

or access. In some cases, publishers now tie

multiple journals together, taking advantage

o online portals. And while you can oten

hand-tailor journal subscriptions or your insti-

tution (only requesting access to the particular

journals aculty would need), the overall cost

savings relative to buying the entire package

is limited or nonexistent. The upshot is that

aside rom interlibrary loan or direct cor-

respondence with researchersthe only way

or a aculty member to see certain research

ndings is by paying the publishers going

rate. As libraries ace continued cutbacks, this

will present more and more o a challenge or

the scholarly enterprise.

ril


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The Internet, of course, was the nal kink

in the chain of events that imperiled the

academiccommercial publishing partnership.

That might not seem surprising. The Web

has radically revised much of life, includ-

ing academia. At SEAS, for example, CS 50,

Introduction to Computer Science I, and QR

48, Bits, are available online. And instead

of a textbook, the introductory Life Sciences

sequence now makes use of a multimedia

showcase. MITs open courseware initiative

is a permanent, ongoing program to make

availablefree and onlinemuch of MITs

course content. But curiously, while we can ac-

complish more and more online (sending holi-

day cards, managing our bank accounts, re-

newing drivers licenses, etc.), the knowledge

produced by research universities like Harvard

has remained comparatively inaccessible, in

a sort of cyberspace lockdown. How did that

happen? How was it allowed to happen?

Before its emergence as a full-edged social

networking and shopping tool, the Internet

served university researchers. But if the cur-

rent commercial model for publication goesunchallenged (leaving publishers as gatekeep-

ers to Web-based scholarship), the Internet

could become more a barrier than a catalyst

for the scholarly enterprise. If the publisher

owns and controls the scholarly content,

Shieber says, theres no way to prevent that

publisher from limiting access and charging for

that access. In the early days of the Internet,

the cost of digitizing print materials was farfrom trivial, and publishers could justify high

online-subscription fees as they migrated

journal content to this uncertain new medium.

Thus, while many other sites began giving

away content, scholarly publishers retained

and further beefed up their access controls.

But are there viable alternatives? Any solution

will require a rethinking of the status quo in

scholarly publishing. One possibility is open-

access journals, exemplied by the publica-

tions of PLoS (Public Library of Science),

founded in 2000 by Nobel laureate Harold Var-

mus. In PLoS journals, authors retain all rights

to their work, and anyone can download and

use information from PLoS free of charge, pro-

vided proper credit is given. But such efforts

are still dwarfed by the subscription journals,

and some of the traditional, longer-standingpublications still count for more in terms of

academic status. Moreover, open-access un-

dertakings arent cost-free: such journals still

need to be supported and maintained.

In the case of many open-access journals,

these costs are shifted to the authors rather

than the readers side. On the highest end, a

agship PLoS journal, for example, charges

authors around $3,000 for the publication of

an article. That makes subscription-based pub-

lications, which typically dont charge authors

for publication, much more attractive for many

authors.

In addition, its important to appreciate the

value added by commercial publishers. Partic-

ularly in an age of instant publication, Shieber

argues, you need people that do what editors

and journals do now. This includes managing

the peer-review process, performing editorial

and production work, and distributing andarchiving the nal product. No less important,

theres the branding and imprimatur, some-

thing that happens more or less as a side

effect of publication in a particular journal.

The Web has made it possible to unbundle

these activities: peer review could happen

in an online forum; editorial and production

work could be done almost anywhere. But theactivities themselves (and their coordination)

remain essential, and they come at a price.

Unfortunately, Wooster says, Web technol-

ogy has yet to put scholarly publishing on

an economic basis thats not dysfunctional.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, the shift of

scholarship from print to Web (unlike musics

move from CDs to MP3s) has resulted in

signicantly higherprices, despite doing away

with a raft of standard printing costs. Shieber

felt there simply had to be another way, where

scholarship ends up winning.

Rethinking the model

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With powerulincentives or pub-lishing in commercial journals, why would anaspiring aculty member choose open access?

This is where Shieber steps in. His plan is to

make open access viable, in essence, by level-

ing the playing eld or scholarly publication.

According to Shieber, all thats needed to set

open access on par with commercial options

is that those underwriting the publishers

services or subscription-ee journals committo a simple compact guaranteeing their will-

ingness to underwrite them or processing-ee

journals as well.

This commitment, i widely embraced by

universities and unding agencies, would

reduce the disincentives or aculty to publish

in open-access venues. While supporting

open-access publishing ees might seem like a

costly commitment or an institution to take

on, in some scenarios, it could be completely

oset by the reduction over time in ees or

subscription-based journals. Indeed, existing

subscription journals might even convert to

open-access models (should the benets be

suciently compelling). Shiebers compact

has another advantage: paying to publish

is more transparent. Traditionally, Shieber

writes, consumers o scholarly articles havebeen well-insulated rom the cost o reading.

I aculty were brought ace to ace with the

actual costs, they might more easily be en-

listed in an eort to address the problem.

To Shieber, such a compact would be arational, air, and economically sustainable

way to support the publication o scholar-

ship. Others arent so sure. One natural

reaction would be: Why should there be any

problemor compactat all? In this age, why

should anyone have to pay to have access to

scholarship? Stevan Harnad, an outspoken

archivangelist or giving scholars the green

light to reely and immediately archive anyarticle they author and a proessor o cogni-

tive science at the University o Southampton

(UK) School o Electronics and Computer

Science, sums up this argument in a haiku:

Its the online age/Youre losing research impact...

/Make it ree online.

Harnad believes that anything that distracts

rom his goal o achieving universal access

in short order (opt-in policies; denitions o

copyright; or simply dealing with the various

rules or ees publishers request or granting

open access) distracts us rom the real issues.

And i it does, Harnad contends, the research

community will yet again have shot itsel in

the oot insoar as universal OA [open access]

...is concernedRather than rearranging the

deck chairs on the Titanic, he says, why not

do something truly transormative. Harnadsparadigm: open-access sel-archiving, in which

authors deposit material in open digital ar-

chives. In short, even right-minded publishers

and supportive academic institutions oten

get in the way o scholars reaching their audi-

ences directly.

the man with aplanComputer scientist Stuart Shieber craftedan open access policy for scholarship that theHarvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences adoptedin February 2008.

kris

snibbe


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Shieber answers such criticisms much as anengineer would. Many aspects o commercial

publishing work well, he says. Instead o bat-

tling the system, our aim should be to set it on

a realistic oundation. You can be passion-

ate about all kinds o things, he says, but i

theres no way or the economics to work out,

it wont work. Notions that we should just

give everything away or that inormation

wants to be ree arent real-world solutions.The ree-content model, even with the help o

advertisements, probably isnt sustainable in

the short term, let alone the long. (The news-

paper industry can certainly corroborate this.)

While praising the good intentions o open-

access advocates like Harnad, Shieber warns

that the situation is ar rom simple. Theres a

notion that once weve solved the access issue,

our problems are over, Shieber says. The real-

ity, he ears, wont be so obliging.

A case study rom the American Physical Soci-

ety (APS) highlights this point. In an article in

the November 1996 APS newsletter, Paul Gin-

sparg (now a proessor o physics at Cornell)

observed that:

publishers had defned themselves in terms o produc-

tion and distribution, roles which we now regard aslargely automated [T]he essential question at this

point is no longer whether the scientifc research lit-

erature will migrate to ully electronic dissemination,

but rather how quickly this transition will take place

now that all o the requisite tools are on-line.

Ginsparg suggested that a shit to electronicdissemination would quickly resolve the

access problem. But more than a decade later,

with scientic journals duly ensconced in

cyberspace, the issue o access continues to be

thorny and unresolved. People are economic

actors, Shieber says, and that means they

work in their own interest, subject to whatever

constraints theyre under. For the publishers,

owning the copyright to published articles

and restricting access (through high ees)

improves the chances o making scholarly pub-

lications pay o. And what o the academics?

While its in scholars best interests to have the

broadest possible access to their work, the re-

wards (and amiliarity) o the existing system

exert a strong gravitational pull.

Shieber contends that unless the incentives

are right, allowing authors and publishersto choose among a variety o publishing

platorms without penalty, scholarship will

continue to suer until a crisis is reached.

While you cant separate the economics rom

the access issue, he says, the economic issue

is clearly secondary. Once the economics are

taken care o, aculty will be able to ocus on

taking scholarship to the next level. And its

there, in discussing the universitys role as agateway to knowledge, that he truly lets his

passion show. The whole point o the univer-

sity is that were supposed to be engaged in

the generation o knowledge or the good o

society, he says. So shouldnt society be able

to get the goods?

shieber contends that unless the incentives

are right, allowing authors and publishers

to choose among a variety o publishingplatorms without penalty, scholarship will

continue to suer until a crisis is reached.

Stuart Shieber: Natural Language Liberator

The DASH Repository

Building a Better e-Book

Q&A with Scribds Trip Adler 06

References and Additional Reading

Discover More Onlinewww.seas.harvard.edu/topics


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Shiebers ocus on economics and practicali-ties undoubtedly has merit and ts the SEAS

emphasis on what works and practical appli-

cations. But there are other actors involved

here: open access raises matters o principle,

both philosophical and political. Absent open

access, how eectively can scholarship pro-

mote the public good? To somei.e., those

who nd it hard to imagine scholarship and

the public good in the same sentencelim-ited access to an article on the Casimir eect

or yet another interpretation o James Joyces

Ulysseswouldnt exactly qualiy as a hot-button

issue. Strictly ivory tower stu.

In the case o science, engineering, and

medicine, people generally understand that

basic, seemingly esoteric research can yield

proound improvements in our lives: NMR

gives us magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)and improved medical diagnoses; digital and

laser technologies give us CDs and DVDs; and

a rotting cantaloupe in a Peoria, Ill., research

lab gives us penicillin. Wooster wonders i

uture benets may be threatened by the

ongoing constriction o scholarly inormation.

I no one knows about a nding, she says,

thats a great disservice to the whole world. I

universities are really aiming to improve theworld, we need to think hard about this.

And there are other matters o principle

involved. As Wooster says, Its always been

insane that the aculty do the research and

write the papers and then give it all awayand

were orced to buyit back. I mean, dont

we alreadyownit? Others make a similar

argument with respect to taxpayers: theyre

being denied something theyve already paid

or. Ater all, ederal unds support a signi-

cant portion o university research. (In 2009,

ederal unding underwrote about 80% o all

SEAS research.) But, with ew exceptions, the

rights to this publicly unded researchwhen

published in a traditional academic journal

are transerred gratisto the publisher. Regard-

less whether taxpayers are interested in, say,

reading up on the latest advances in uel-cell

technology, Shieber and other open-access

advocates insist they should be able to do so:

the principle still applies.

Such considerations suggest another validmodel or open-access scholarship, aside

rom sel-archiving and Shiebers compact.

The ederal government could step into the

breach: ater all, whats at stake isnt merely

the public good butpublic goods. Given that

much research is publicly unded, the people

(and their government) have an interest in

the results (and accessto those results). In

other words, the researcher-publisher partner-

ship isnt bipartiteits a three-way street.

Perhaps all ederal research grants could stipu-

late that ndings achieved with public support

must be made reely available, either through

publication in open-access journals or, i

published in subscription-based ones, by being

made concurrently available via a ree digital

archive. At the same time, ederal research

grants could cover reasonablepublication costs.

The result, with some tweaking, could recon-

cile the interests o all parties.

In act, we already have a working model or

a good part o this approach, in the area o

medical research. The National Library o

Medicine, part o the National Institutes o

Health (NIH), operates PubMed, a compre-

hensive database o journal citations and

abstracts. It also maintains PubMed Central,a ree digital archive o biomedical and lie

sciences journal literature. In April 2008, at

the instruction o Congress, the NIH adopted

a new public-access policy, mandating that any

investigator unded by the NIH must submit a

copy o any peer-reviewed manuscript that had

been accepted or publication or posting in

PubMed Central. At present, the policy doesnt

provide unds to cover costs associated withpublication, somewhat limiting this best-

practice scenario.

Scholarship as a public good... and public goods


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The devil, of course, is in the details, and

questions remain about the likely fallout from

any programmatic commitment to open access.

Would academic presses and parts of the com-

mercial publishing business perish? Shieber

insists that his goal (and the overall intent of

open access) has never been to take down

the publishers. Especially in the Wild West

environment of cyberspace (from blog postings

to tweets to suspect Wikipedia entries), editors

and peer review are as essential as ever.

For his part, Shieber downplays the impact of

the current debate. A very small percentage of

written works would fall under the open-access

regime as its currently being discussed, he

says. Right now, were just talking aboutscholarly articlespeer-reviewed, specialist

works. The discussion doesnt involve books

(see online content), editorials, content written

by journalists, etc. Even if scholarly research

shifted entirely to open-access journals tomor-

row, publishers would hardly be out of work.

In any case, there will probably be an endur-

ing market for print versions of publications.

(Kindle has yet to displace Amazons bookdepartment.)

But what about the impact on libraries? As

more and more collections move online,

will the librarys storage function be dimin-

ished? Many people assume that moving to

e-journals and digital collections would pose

a threat to libraries, with the latter winding up

nearly invisible. Wooster strongly demurs. She

doesnt think the digital library will be any less

vital than todays paper-chase repositories.

John Palfreythe Henry N. Ess III Professor

of Law, head of the Law School library, and

co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet

and Societyanticipates the emergence of

a whole new type of librarian (his preferred

term is empiricist) as libraries transform into

information centers, with open-access archives

playing a major role. Much like publishers,

libraries offer services that will continue to be

of value even if journals go online and open-

access archives become commonplace. Shieber

agrees. Library services (reference, teaching,

and new functions designed to make open-

access materials available) will all continue

to be needed and will be incorporated into

the librarys purview, he says. And, Wooster

points out, the librarys role as a place for arecord of history isnt likely to be changing

any time soon.

Moving forward on the question of access may

also mean looking back to the traditional role

of university presses as editors and distribu-

tors of a given institutions scholarship. (Shie-

ber concedes the irony that hes published

his books with MIT Press rather than Harvard

University Press.)

University-based digital archives represent

another avenue for open access. Such archives

are already coming into being, as seen in the

DASH open-access repository or the Medical

Schools Harvard Catalyst project, which fea-

tures a social networking database for linking

researchers and research (including links to

the DASH archive) across the entire University.

And some elds (physics, for example) havelong maintained free archives of preprints,

for example, arXiv.org, developed by Cornells

Ginsparg.

Mobilizing Harvard faculty behind the open-

access model and developing a practical

platform for its implementation will be ongoing

challenges. Shieber has invited fellow open-

access expert and Berkman Center VisitingFellow Suber to help further foster the process.

Shieber cautions that any shift to open access

will take time. Even after the conceptual and

economic issues are resolved, he doesnt advo-

cate changing everything at once. But once the

issue of open access becomes secondary and

the claims of researchers and publishers have

been reconciled in a fair (and sustainable)

way, then, he believes, scholars, universities,

publishers, and the wider world will be able

to focus on a bracing new realm ofdiscovery.

And isnt that what we really want science and

research to be about?

Other ways to open access:Brave new libraries and digital archives

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Geniuses use American Express?

In September, L. Mahadevan, Lola Englandde Valpine Proessor o Applied Mathematics,was named a MacArthur Fellowthe geniusellowshipor his research into the science andengineering o everyday lie. In addition to thefurry o media coverage, Mahadevan was evenapproached by American Express about appear-ing in an advertisement. SEAS is now home to

three MacArthur geniuses: Lene Hau, Mallinck-rodt Proessor o Physics and o Applied Physics,was a MacArthur Fellow in 2001 and Dan Schrag,Sturgis Hooper Proessor o Geology and Proes-sor o Environmental Science and Engineering,was a Fellow in 2000.

Passing of a pioneer of ocean dynamics

Allan R. Robinson, Gordon McKay Proessor oGeophysical Fluid Dynamics,Emeritus, passedaway unexpectedly at the age o 76 on Sept.25, 2009. A special 1999 issue oDynamics oAtmospheres and Oceanshonored his prooundinfuence on the eld: His relentless quest orunderstanding o the inner workings o theocean has inspired many students, postdoctoral

ellows, and colleagues alike. A memorial servicewill be held at Harvard in the spring.

Next on 60 Minutes

A small lm crew rom 60 Minutes spent aday at SEAS to record the visit by star che JosAndrs. An innovator in microgastronomy,Andres visited the labs o Dave Weitz, Mallinck-rodt Proessor o Physics and Applied Physics, tosee the latest in emulsions, and Vinny Manoha-

ran, Assistant Proessor o Chemical Engineeringand Physics, to make mayonnaise with colloids,and he guest-taught ES 139, Innovation in Sci-ence and Engineeringwhere, o course, hedid a cooking demo. Weitz and colleagues aredesigning a uture General Education course onthe science and engineering o ood.

Discover more in the SEAS 2008-9 annual report

www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/publications/

annual-reports

Community Highlights

All hands on deckOn October 16, 2009, Dean Cherry A. Murray hosted her rst all-hands meeting to

outline her 10-year plan or SEAS. She placed particular emphasis on hiring aculty;

enhancing the curriculum through hands-on learning and new degree programs

such as bioengineering; and investing in community-building. Murray also elaborated

on her idea or a uture Deans Lectureship series that would bring prominent SEAS

alumni to campus.

For more details visit, www.intranet.seas.harvard.edu.

Select Awards

Five students named 2010 Siebel Scholars

The Siebel Scholars program recognizes out-standing graduate students rom the worldsmost prestigious graduate schools. The studentswill receive a $35,000 award or their nal yearo graduate studies. SEAS graduate students sohonored include: Georey Werner Challen 02(Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science), ZhouFan 10 (A.B./S.M. candidate in Mathematics/Computer Science), Brett Alexander Harrison10 (A.B./S.M. candidate in Computer Sci-ence), Benjamin Lubin 99 (Ph.D. candidate inComputer Science), and Ameya Velingker 10(A.B./S.M. candidate in Mathematics, Physics/Computer Science).

Zhigang Suo honored with HumboldtResearch Award

Zhigang Suo, Allen E. and Marilyn M. PuckettProessor o Mechanics and Materials, has beenhonored with a Humboldt Research Award. The60,000-EUR award is conerred in recognition olietime achievements in research.

Wood and Wolfe receive PresidentialEarly Career Awards

Rob Wood, Assistant Proessor o Electrical Engi-neering, and Patrick J. Wole, Associate Proessoro Electrical Engineering, were each named arecipient o the 2009 Presidential Early CareerAward or Scientists and Engineers. Its the high-est honor bestowed by the ederal governmenton researchers at the early stages o their careers.

Anthony Oettinger receives NationalIntelligence Medallion

Anthony G. Oettinger, Gordon McKay ResearchProessor o Applied Mathematics and ResearchProessor o Inormation Resources Policy,

received the National Intelligence Medallion inrecognition o outstanding service in support othe Director o National Intelligence as Chair-man o the Intelligence Science Board.

MacArthur genius fellow L. Mahadevan. Photo courtesy

the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Around Oxford Street

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Research Briefs

Implant-based cancer vaccine is rst to eliminate tumors in miceNew approach reprograms the immune system to attack tumors throughout the body.

Who: David J. Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Proessor o Bioengineering in

Harvards School o Engineering and Applied Sciences and Core Member o the

Wyss Institute, and Glenn Drano at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Why it matters: The new approach uses plastic disks impregnated with tumor-specic

antigens and implanted under the skin to reprogram the mammalian immune system

to attack tumors.

Whats next: Further research and development and extending the approach to other

types o cancer and, much longer term, investigating broader clinical applications.

Flight of the Robobee pushes the frontiersof engineering, entomology, and more

Funded by a $10-million NSF grant, researchersare seeking to create next generation Micro AirVehicles.

Who:A team led by Rob Wood, Assistant Proes-sor o Electrical Engineering, with collaboratorsrom Northeastern and Centeye, a microelec-tronics rm.

Why it matters: The research could lead to agreater understanding o how to mimic the col-lective intelligence o a bee colony; oster novelmethods or building an electronic surrogatenervous system; and advance work on small-scalefying mechanical devices.

Whats next: The scientists anticipate the deviceswill advance elds ranging rom the lie sciences(or example, entomology and developmentalbiology) to amorphous computing and electrical

engineering.

3-d structure of human genome deciphered

Scientists have deciphered the three-dimensionalstructure o the human genome.

Who: Erez Lieberman-Aidena graduate studentat both SEAS and the laboratory o Eric Landerat the Broad Instituteand colleagues.

Why it matters: This nding deepens our under-standing o how cellular DNA olds at scales thatdwar the double helix, which promises to yieldurther insights into genomic unction.

Whats next: Applying the discovery to curingdisease.

China could meet its future energy needsby wind alone

Researchers estimated that wind alone couldmeet the countrys electricity demands projectedor 2030.

Who: Michael McElroy, Gilbert Butler Proessor

o Environmental Studies; Chris P. Nielsen, Exec-utive Director o the Harvard China Project; andXi Lu, a graduate student (all based at SEAS)and a team rom Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Why it matters: The group used extensive me-teorological data and incorporated the Chinesegovernments energy-bidding and nancialrestrictions or delivering wind power, provid-ing the rst ully comprehensive model or thepotential contribution o this renewable energy

resource.

Whats next: The researchers plan to conducta more intensive study in China to investigate theyear-to-year geographic variations in wind. Themodel could be used or assessing wind-powerpotential anywhere in the world, onshore oroshore, and could be extended as well to solar-generated electricity.

Discover more research...

www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events

A computer rendered prototype of a robotic bee.Illustration courtesy of Robert Wood.


14


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New & Recent Appointments

In Translation

Xbox computing speeds up research

NVIDIA Corporation recognized Harvard asa CUDA Center o Excellence or its commit-ment to teaching GPU (Graphics Processing

Unit) Computing and its integration o CUDAenabled GPUs or a host o science and engineer-ing research projects.

SEAS grad student and alumni recognized asamong worlds top young innovators

In its annual TR35 list (the 35 top innovatorsunder the age o 35), MITs Technology Reviewhonored graduate student Erez Lieberman-Aid-en and two alumni with SEAS connections: JamesCarey 04, o SiOnyx, or his use o black siliconto build inexpensive, super-sensitive light detec-tors, and Kurt Zenz House 08, o C12 Energy,or his work in the capture o carbon dioxidethrough cement production.

Robotic grasper grabs worldwideexclusive license

Barrett Technology Inc. ormalized a licens-ing agreement with Harvard University underwhich it has acquired exclusive rights to a novelpolymer-based robotic-hand technology. Thisrobotic grasper was developed by Robert D.Howe, Gordon McKay Proessor o Engineering,and Aaron Dollar, a ormer member o Howeslab and currently an Assistant Proessor at YalesSchool o Engineering and Applied Science.

A more exible gripallows this Harvard-basedrobotic hand to grasp arange of objects.

aaron

dollar

Yiling Chen, Assistant Professor ofComputer Science

Chena veteran o the online giant Yahoo!researches topics at the intersection o computer

science and economics, encompassing algo-rithms, complexity, mechanism design, gametheory, optimization, multi-agent systems, andmachine learning.

Stephen Chong, Assistant Professor ofComputer Science

Chongs research aims to help programmerswrite trustworthy programs. He ocuses onusing programming language technologiesto provide strong, practical inormation-securityguarantees.

Krzysztof Gajos, Assistant Professor ofComputer Science

Gajoss research interests are in human-computerinteraction, articial intelligence, and applied

machine learning.

Daniel Needleman, Assistant Professor ofApplied Physics and Assistant Professorof Molecular and Cellular Biology

Joint appointment with the Faculty o Arts and

Sciences Center or Systems Biology

Needleman uses quantitative experimental tech-niques to study how the cooperative behaviorso molecules give rise to the architecture and dy-namics o sel-organizing subcellular structures.

Sharad Ramanathan,Assistant Professor of Molecular andCellular Biology

Joint appointment with the Faculty o Arts andSciences Center or Systems Biology

Ramanathans research explores the ways inwhich cells and organisms process signals rom

their surrounding environment and how theunderlying molecular pathways or such sensoryprocessing evolved.

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Alumni Connections

Everything and Anything

We like to say that alumni rom SEAS go onto careers in everything rom engineering tophilanthropy. Even with that in mind, the recentpursuits o Phil Maymin 97 (M.S. in AppliedMathematics and a B.A. in Computer Science)

are notably diverse. For his day job, Mayminserves as an Assistant Proessor o Finance andRisk Engineering at the Polytechnic Instituteo New York University.

He also recently gained media attention orhis paper suggesting that hit songs can be usedto predict stock market behavior: With therecent high stock volatility, people should nowpreer less volatile music. Furthermore, the beatvariance appears able to predict uture market

volatility, producing 2.5 volatility points o protper year on average.

And in 2006, he ran or Congress in Connecti-cuts 4th Congressional District as an outspokenLibertarian. While he didnt win, he was knownor his humorous campaign ads.

Discover more about SEAS alumni...

www.seas.harvard.edu/audiences/alumni

Recent Gifts

Thanks to several current use gifts (below),SEAS has been able to greatly enhance itseducational programs.

Warren Wilkinson SB 41 established a current-use SEAS Deans Discretionary Fund o $250,000.SEAS is using the fexible und to bolster the

undergraduate teaching labs and supplementour current nanotech equipment.

SEAS received over $325,000 in gifts fromvarious college alumni to support TECH. Thisgenerous support allows TECH to continuedeveloping innovative education or studentsthrough courses, seminars, training, networkingopportunities, and annual competitions.

SEAS emeritus professor and Nobel Prize winner

Nicolaas Bloembergen AM 51 GSA 48 GSA 51established a $1 million Charitable RemainderTrust that will ultimately support SEAS graduatestudents.

Discover more ways to connect and to give...

http://alumni.harvard.edu/

Celebrating the interface of the artsand sciences

The Laboratory at Harvard (The Lab), a catalystspace to support student and aculty explorationand experimentation, hosted an ocial openingon November 8 in the Northwest Science Build-ing. Exhibitions by Harvard students rangedrom Vertigrow, a modular planter designed orcrowded urban spaces, to GIGUE, a music-socialperormance generated rom human bio-data.The Lab (www.laboratory.harvard.edu) is led byDavid Edwards, Gordon McKay Proessor o thePractice o Bioengineering.

J-Term course offers experience in the eldSEAS, in collaboration with the Escola Politc-nica o the Universidade de So Paulo and theDavid Rockeeller Center or Latin AmericanStudies, is oering a eld course that will takeplace in Brazil during the Universitys rst Janu-ary Term. Students will have opportunities toexplore energy, water, and the environment.

Hands On, Minds On

Innovation Space expands opportunities for studentsThe Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH) launched its

new Innovation Space on September 1, expanding SEASs resources or experiential

education and hands-on innovation. Occupying 2,100 square eet on the top foor o

the Harvard Student Agencies (HSA), its open to students all hours and organized

through a partnership between TECH, HSA, and their aliated student groups.

Phil Maymin 97 is a professor and formerlibertarian political candidate. Imagecourtesy of Phil Maymin.

SEASs Anas Chalah shows off the InstructionalLabs to Mireille and Warren Wilkinson 41.

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After serving as dean of SEAS for the past

six months, I nd myself with an enviable

challenge. Our faculty, students, and staff are

superb. Our alumni are as amazing as theyare dedicated. And Ive found that being part

of Harvard, even during what has been a

difcult time, is an unparalleledand exhila-

ratingexperience.

I believe that we can make SEAS even more

outstanding as a school for engineering and

applied sciencesnot simply continuing and

maintaining what we have accomplished, but

making SEAS preeminent in its faculty, its

students, its research, its community. Ive

outlined a plan, whichwith the help of an

outstanding team of faculty and administra-

torsI believe will take us in that direction.

At the heart of this vision for SEAS is a

comprehensive educational and research

planning process and a renewed, commitment

to building strong foundations and spreading

the word. In short, we intend to be bold, to

grow, and to continue raising our stature.

This redesigned newsletter marks one of

the ways were taking new steps to share the

fantastic, broad-based contributions of the

SEAS community with our friends, peers,

and the world-at-large. In this issue, we tackle

the topic of open-access scholarship. With

the leadership of computer scientist StuartShieber, Harvard became one the rst aca-

demic organizations in the country to adopt

an open-access mandate. It also turns out

that the problem of access is, at heart, a

systems-level engineering problem with more

twists and turns than a good mystery. As my

predecessor Venkatesh Venky Narayanamurti

was fond of saying, engineering does, indeed,underlie everything.

I hope you nd our comprehensive look at

open access as refreshing and as fascinating

as I do. In coming issues, well cover a wide

range of topics, including nature-inspired

engineering, the future of energy, and student

innovation.

Our new website (www.seas.harvard.edu)is now the place to nd the latest news on

research and student life.

I also encourage you to become a fan of SEAS

on Facebook (www.facebook.com/hseas);

subscribe to the Harvard Research Twitter

feed, twitter.com/HarvardResearch ; and visit

the new Alumni Affairs site http://alumni.

harvard.edu.

Thanks to everyone who has made my

transition so effortless. I look forward to

meeting many of you in the months ahead

and to keeping you up-to-date about our

progress. In the meantime, please feel free

to drop me a line.

How do you make a greatplace even better?

Cherry A. Murray

Dean, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering

and Applied Sciences

[email protected]

Dean Cherry A. Murray

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Harvard SEAS Newsletter Winter 2010