From U C Berkeley News, Winter 2009:
In January 2008, with library collection funds flat and scholarly-journal costs soaring, the campus launched the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII), a pilot program to subsidize scholars who choose to make their work available online at no cost to readers.
Now, as even Ivy League institutions find themselves on shaky financial ground, four elite private universities have joined Berkeley in a commitment to so-called "open access" journals. Declaring that "the economic downturn underscores the significance of open-access publications," Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Berkeley have formed a five-member compact aimed at providing "barrier-free access to information" — from DNA-sequencing data to medical research to sociological studies — to academics and the general public alike.
Read more at "A 'Public Option' for Scholarship".