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Published online 20 February 2008 | Nature 451, 879 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451879f

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Harvard adopts opt-out open-access policy

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  • In the age of Linux, the decision of Harvard has not come a day too soon, I am sure others would follow what is Harvard's trend setting move-as usual. Transparency and open source is the hallmark of democratic system unless need to subvert it is for real public interest like Defense secrets and like. Dictators have flourished, like bacteria and pathogens, in the atmosphere of secrecy and non transparency which in evolution meant deprivation of oxygen. Greetings to Harvard, continue and enlarge such open source environment ! If you agree or do not agree with me do mail at jkshran1@gmail.com

    • 20 Feb, 2008
    • Posted by: J.K Sharan
  • In the age of Linux, the decision of Harvard has not come a day too soon, I am sure others would follow what is Harvard's trend setting move-as usual. Transparency and open source is the hallmark of democratic system unless need to subvert it is for real public interest like Defense secrets and like. Dictators have flourished, like bacteria and pathogens, in the atmosphere of secrecy and non transparency which in evolution meant deprivation of oxygen. Greetings to Harvard, continue and enlarge such open source environment ! If you agree or do not agree with me do mail at jksharan1@gmail.com

    • 20 Feb, 2008
    • Posted by: J.K Sharan
  • Fantastic. Moreover, the peer-review system is broken with top PI's getting away with publishing high impact poorly reviewed rubbish. If more non-peer-reviewed research becomes more prominent it will hardly make a difference to quality and can overall only be a good thing. I long for the day results can be posted online immediately after an internal review process, followed by online review by a worldwide audience. A secret peer-review system as the previous comment (JK Sharan) says allows dictators (big PI's) to flourish like bacteria and pathogens!

    • 21 Feb, 2008
    • Posted by: N Mody
  • To Dr Mody: people already can publish their pre-submission manuscripts to a preprint server such as ArXiv or Nature Precedings. The exaggerated description of the peer-review process by Dr Sharan and Dr Mody is not one that I recognize.

    • 25 Feb, 2008
    • Posted by: Maxine Clarke