Open Access at MIT and Beyond

To the members of the MIT community:

I am writing to share the first deliverable of the Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access to MIT’s Research (Open Access Task Force), a white paper on the open access landscape at MIT and in Europe and the United States.

In July 2017, I charged this Institute-wide task force, led by Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Hal Abelson and Director of Libraries Chris Bourg, with identifying ways in which MIT’s current open access policies and practices might be updated and revised in order to further the Institute’s mission to disseminate the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible.

The paper released today, "Open Access at MIT and Beyond," provides MIT community members with background information to inform discussions over the coming academic year. These discussions will take place at community forums and in other venues, including online via the task force idea bank, and will inform the recommendations the task force is developing to support and strengthen open access policies and practices at MIT.

You can read more about the paper here.

I encourage you to read the paper, attend community forums, and submit ideas to the task force. You may also send comments to openaccesstaskforce@mit.edu.

Sincerely,

Martin A. Schmidt
Provost