The DASH Repository
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Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard, or DASH (http://dash.harvard.edu/), is a central open-access repository for the scholarly output of faculty and the broader Harvard research community. DASH relies upon DSpace, open-source software designed specifically for digital content archiving. |
DASH is, in part, the byproduct of the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. Signed by Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, MIT, and University of California, Berkeley, on Sept. 14, 2009, the agreement was hailed a breakthrough. Besides mandating archives, such as DASH, that make it easy to upload digital articles, the compact provides for dedicated funding to offset fees for open-access journal publication, in the words of the agreement, through:
durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.
By such provisions, the institutions expect that their faculty will be more inclined to opt for open-access alternatives for their scholarship.
The compact levels the playing field by enabling faculty to choose publications (commercial, open-access, or other) that best suit their needs without being limited by fees (to publish or to subscribe).
The goal is thus progress through “collaboration not coercion,” says Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library. Likewise, archives aren’t meant to be an assault on traditional publishing but rather another window for distribution of knowledge.
