The Harvard University Office for Scholarly Communication was formed in 2008 with a charge to the University Library from the Harvard Provost to spearhead campus-wide initiatives to open, share, and preserve scholarship. The OSC benefits from the oversight of a University-wide faculty advisory committee that provides advice on specific programs and policies.

With support from OSC, open-access policies are now in place in more than half of the Harvard schools. These policies were voted on by the faculty and grant an automatic license to Harvard for scholarly articles authored by faculty members.

OSC is undertaking many other activities related to open access, including support for open-access journal publishing, conference presentations, online distribution of PhD dissertations, and education and outreach to faculty on the importance of the policies and the procedures for supporting them.