Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:46:45 +0530 From: Shivendra Singh <shiv.mail@gmail.com> Five US universities to provide central funding for open access publication fees<http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/bmcblog/entry/five_us_universities_to_provide> In a major step forward for the open access movement, Berkeley, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week announced <http://news.biomedcentral.com/t/13102619/7881471/1544239/0/> a joint commitment to provide their researchers with central financial assistance to cover open access publication fees, and encouraged other academic institutions to join them. The aim of the 'compact for open access publication equity<http://news.biomedcentral.com/t/13102619/7881471/1544240/0/>' is to create a level playing field between subscription-based journals (which institutions support centrally via library budgets) and open access journals (which often depend on publication fees). Read more <http://news.biomedcentral.com/t/13102619/7881471/1544241/0/> http://www.oacompact.org/ -- Shivendra Singh 9815526163