CV Scrape Frequently Asked Questions

At your request, the Office for Scholarly Communication will review your list of publications (“scrape your CV”) and determine which works we may lawfully make open access through DASH.

We’ll need you to provide us with a list of your past publications. We’ll review them to determine when we already have permission to make them open access through DASH (for example, from the Harvard OA policies or from your publishers) and when we’d have to seek permission.

When we already have permission, then we’ll deposit the works in DASH on your behalf. Sometimes we’ll need you to provide us with appropriate versions of the texts. In those cases, we’ll contact you with specific requests.

When we don’t already have permission to distribute a work, we’ll usually try to seek permission from the publisher.

CV Scrapes are always voluntary. The process typically takes 8-10 weeks.

No. CV Scraping is a free service offered by the Office for Scholarly Communication.

• Your works will be open access in DASH and available for anyone around the world to read and download.

• For most authors, you will have more works open access in DASH than are covered by the Harvard open-access policies.

• For works not covered by the Harvard open-access license, you will be spared the work of seeking permission to share them. For all works, you will be spared the work of depositing them in the repository.

• Works in DASH are indexed in a very wide range of search engines (including Google and Google Scholar). They are easy to discover, and they are downloaded by the millions of every year. DASH will let you see how many times any individual work has been downloaded and from where. Each of your works in DASH will receive a permanent URL and be preserved in the Harvard Library’s state-of-the-art digital preservation system.

To request a CV Scrape or ask any questions, please contact the OSC. We will then confirm your request and start the process.

Please note that before we can begin the CV Scrape, you will need to sign an Assistance Authorization (AA). AAs do two things: reaffirm the open-access policy (if you are covered by one) and give the OSC permission to make DASH-related licensing choices on your behalf. The latter ensures copyright compliance in DASH and allows us to request a publisher’s permission to distribute a work in DASH.