The proposal, which was voted on yesterday, requires that faculty members "make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each Faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit." Authors will be able to request an exemption in writing, but the default state will be for new research to be made available to all.
This move comes in advance of a law that comes into effect this year, requiring any recipients of NIH funding as of October 1, 2007 to submit an electronic copy of any publication to PubMed, and it is thought that this move by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will lead the way for Harvard Medical School to do the same.