Some “open access” journals come at a price, in the form of a fee paid by the author (or the author’s employer or some other fund) to make the content immediately available open access to the world.  Harvard University recently became one of five leading universities to sign the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity, agreeing to establish mechanisms for underwriting publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in such journals.  See Inside Higher Ed’s “Breakthrough in Open Access" for some interesting commentary about the project and SHERPA/RoMEO’s Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access for an idea of publishers that use such a fee-based model.

Coming off the heels of the public unveiling of DASH, this announcement is an exciting advancement in the university’s open access activities.