UC Berkeley's Vice-Chancellor for Research and the University Librarian are co-sponsoring a pilot project supporting Berkeley researchers who want to make their publications freely available to the public. The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative – BRII – was announced on January 21st, 2008. According to the BRII website:
The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) supports faculty members who want to make their journal articles free to all readers immediately upon publication.
An 18-month pilot program, BRII will subsidize, in various degrees, fees charged to authors who select open access or paid access publication. The pilot will also yield data that can be used to gauge faculty interest in — as well as the budgetary impacts of — these new modes of scholarly communication on the Berkeley campus.
More information can be found at the BRII website at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/brii/. Visit the UC Berkeley Library's Scholarly Communication page to learn more about Open Access publishing.