Legislation State Senator Daniel Biss (D-Evanston) sponsored to work toward making state universities' taxpayer-funded research available to the public recently passed the House by a vote of 98-16. Senate Bill 1900, which will require each public university to convene an open access task force, now awaits the governor's signature.
The task forces will study other institutions' experiences with open access and issue recommendations as to how each school can make more of its researchers' work available to the public at no cost.
Some open access policies require faculty members to submit articles accepted for publication to an online repository that members of the public can access for free. Others strongly encourage faculty to participate but allow them to opt out if a journal publishing their work refuses to allow the article to be made freely available. With state universities constrained by tight budgets seeking to limit expenses such as journal subscriptions, open access policies could benefit students and faculty as well as members of the general public.
