UC will open its research to the public -- for free - Inside Bay Area

"In just a few months, the latest University of California research will be available online for free -- no subscription required. The 10-campus UC system is the latest -- and by far the largest -- university in the world to open its publications to the public, fueling an international movement to make academic work more widely available. When it goes into effect Nov. 1, the policy will apply to 8,000 faculty members and the roughly 40,000 papers they produce each year on subjects such as planetary magnetic fields, modern Israeli fiction and a host of other topics. 'These are big numbers,' said Christopher Kelty, a UCLA information studies professor who helped shape the policy passed late last month by the system's Academic Senate. 'It should lend some gravitational force to this process.' The process -- aimed at breaking a decades-old system under which most academic research appeared only in pricey journals -- is moving quickly. More than 175 research institutions around the world have approved open access mandates, including Duke, Emory, Princeton, Wellesley and the University of Kansas, according to the Registry of Open Access Repositories. Some schools or departments, such as the Harvard Business School and the Stanford School of Education, also have done so ..."