For some time now there’s been a movement within academia for open access to their research results. Many professors, especially those in Mathematics, have pledged not to publish in closed journals. The paid journals, of course, hate this and have been fighting the trend in any way possible including lobbying the government to make open access journals illegal. Some would say that the fight reached its inevitable conclusion with the Aaron Swartz affair (although JSTOR, to its credit, refused to participate in the prosecution). If you don’t know about the open access movement, let the incomparable Jorge Cham explain it to you.
Now, in what could well be a tipping point in the fight, The University of California has instituted an open access policy. The new policy requires that all research from all 10 campuses of the UC system be available to the public without charge via the campus Website eScholarship. You can read the UC announcement here. I’m confident that we’ll soon see other universities following suit.
That’s a good thing. Whatever you think about paid journals and their place in research, it’s hard to argue with the notion that when the public pays for research (as they do for most research) they should be able to see the results without paying exorbitant fees to a publisher.