MIT Research Goes Public

From ESchoolNews: MIT's faculty has voted unanimously to post its faculty research for free on the web.

MIT joins about 30 universities and colleges--including Harvard, Stanford, and Boston universities--that have approved some form of open-access model, said Peter Suber, an open-access advocate and national expert. MIT will institute open access university-wide, joining Boston University as the only schools to take that approach. Other campuses have implemented open access one department at a time.

The open-access mandate is not the first time MIT has grabbed attention with academic openness. MIT's OpenCourseWare project has made classroom lectures, syllabi, and assignments available for free on the internet--a move lauded by many in higher education.

I know there's a potential dark side to all this, but this sort of story makes me more optimistic...