Not to be out done by their neighbours at Harvard, MIT has moved to make all research papers from its faculty open access.

“The vote is a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas,” says Bish Sinyal, chair of the MIT Faculty (press release).

Harvard became the first university to make open access the default option for its researchers in February this last year (see: Harvard adopts open-access policy).

MIT papers will be placed in the DSpace archive, although authors may chose to opt out. “While Harvard and Stanford universities have implemented open access mandates at some of their schools, MIT is the first to fully implement the policy university-wide as a result of a faculty vote,” says the institute.

Wired says:

Hal Abelson, who spearheaded the effort, said that these agreements went beyond providing a repository for papers, they changed the power dynamics between scientific publishers and researchers.

“What’s important here is that it’s giving the University a formal role in how publications happen,” Abelson said. “Some of the faculty said, ‘You’re calling this an open access resolution but actually the way to think of it is as a collective bargaining agreement.'”