MIT faculty mandate open access to publication

Blogged here by Hal Abelson, chair of the committee that composed the resolution: the MIT faculty have voted unanimously to adopt a resolution that includes these phrases:

[E]ach 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

and

The policy is to take effect immediately

Think that's clear enough for any of the hair-splitting legalists out there?

I believed there was time when humanists set the moral direction for the academy. We're lucky that our scientists' pursuit of truth seems to be generating enough of a draft to pull us along.