Last week the MIT faculty adopted a resolution that makes their scholarly articles freely and openly available to the entire world. Here's an excerpt from the resolution:

"Each Faculty member grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to MIT a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same."

The entire resolution is here. A news story is here on Ars Technica.