Harvard, NIH, and the balance of power in the open access debate

This paper seeks to highlight the recent open access initiatives of Harvard University and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The paper discusses opportunities and consequences of the recent initiatives.

The paper finds that the NIH open access policy will make available tens of thousands of peer‐reviewed articles per year. The Harvard open access initiative may be a harbinger of things to come at other US universities.

This paper reinforces many of the concepts being discussed on the listservs regarding these remarkable initiatives.