Princeton University Insists on Open Access

A new policy at Princeton prohibits (unless a special waver is granted) professors from assigning exclusive rights to publishers. This might at first appear to be a mandate but it is really a liberation. Professors have been browbeat for generations by publishers who demand all rights to an author’s work, which, under the law, they can keep for a lifetime. The new university rule makes it possible for the faculty to insist on a different policy. It is obviously true that faculty want open access and certainly do not want publishers to maintain exclusives to an author’s work. This policy might also help to crack the cartel and force a change of policy at major publishing outlets, which have been reluctant to change even in the digital age.