Stuart M. Shieber, Harvard's James O. Welch Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science, will serve as director of the University's new Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC). The impetus for Shieber's appointment and the launch of OSC was the adoption by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University of a policy that granted the University the right to make FAS faculty members' scholarly articles freely available. Shieber authored the policy motion, which passed unanimously.
The Harvard University Library (HUL) created the OSC to enable individual faculty members to distribute their scholarly writings in keeping with the University's long-standing policy that 'when entering into agreements for the publication and distribution of copyrighted materials individuals will make arrangements that best serve the public interest.' The OSC, which will be under the oversight of a faculty advisory committee, will be responsible for executing the University's open-access policy. It will undertake many related activities, which could include the online distribution of Ph.D. dissertations and of gray literature (datasets, technical reports, and occasional lectures), support for open-access journal publishing, and sponsoring of conferences. The OSC will also coordinate other University-wide open-access initiatives. All the faculties of the University will be invited to join in a common effort to transmit scholarly articles to a central repository.
Shieber is the author, co-author, or editor of five books and numerous articles. Most recently, Shieber edited "The Turing Test" (MIT Press, 2004), which explores the philosophical basis for attributing intelligence to machines.
