Another Victory for Open Access

Boston University has announced that "research by ... faculty and staff will soon be freely available in an online archive, bypassing the conventional and restrictive route of publishing papers in academic journals ..." What makes this announcement particularly noteworthy is that all of BU's schools and college have endorsed the new policy. All of BU's scholarly output will be freely available "as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship isn't used for profit." These conditions seem very reasonable to me. In addition, everyone who participates in the online archive will "retain the rights to their own research." Robert Hudson, BU University Librarian, believes that open access will help libraries cope with the escalating costs of information, and also "showcase the research and scholarship of the university in ways that have not been evident."