A Harvard Dream Come True: Free Scholarly Articles!

Privileged Harvard students have long been able to login to JSTOR free of charge and usually in a semi-comatose state. Now, however, anyone with Internet access can pretend to be an Extension School student and read up on a professor’s lifelong passion for amoebas—and for free. (Disclaimer: this is under the assumption that they’d want to, of course).

On Tuesday, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved a motion to make all of their future published academic works, the product of all that time not spent in office hours, available within the Harvard community. Plus, the lack of costs in accessing these publications means no more undercover trips to the COOP in search of hidden ISBN numbers.

“Free access to all the writings of Harvard professors­... It’s a good thing,” says Government Professor Gary King, speaking to the fact that the journals where such articles were previously published were not only expensive for college students, but also robbed writers of their copyrights.

This motion will probably, per convention, induce other institutions to follow in Harvard’s footsteps (can you say, “financial aid reform?”) and thus affect other researchers hoping to become part of a similar system in the future. “I applaud Harvard for taking this step. With its reputation, it can make an important statement,” says Richard P. Woychik, director of the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, “It creates data and creates knowledge.” Essentially, Harvard is brimming with resources—maybe it’s time for us to learn how to share.

And for us, the students? If you are as intellectually motivated as you should be, instead of shelling out seven dollars for a poorly conceived dhall party, you can now spend your weekend nights increasing your mental repertoire... And for free! (Don’t try to pretend this doesn’t excite you). Science article aficionado John S. Liu ’11, for one, agrees: “Friday, Saturday night, I can’t go to the library, but the Internet’s always on!” Word.