Happy Birthday, Budapest Open Access Initiative

The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) is the nearest thing to an official definition of open access that we have. Today is apparently its sixth birthday. If you want to find out more about BOAI and what's happened in those six years, where better to go than the man who helped draw up that definition, Peter Suber?

And what better birthday present could open access have have than this announcement that Harvard, or at least The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, will be adopting it as standard policy?

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each Faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit.