MIT to make all faculty publications open access

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/mit-to-make-all-faculty-publications-open-access.ars

Although most commercial academic publishers require that the authors of the works they publish sign all copyrights over to the journal, Congress recently mandated that all researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health retain the right to freely distribute their works one year after publication

This is one of the most ridiculous clauses that exist in a lot of journals, you do all the work but you lose a lot of your rights over your work if you want to publish in a journal. People doing work don't care about publisher, they just want their work to be known to others. Its already been too late, we have not moved to a more open format of publishing, almost everything nowadays is available for access on web, but research publications are not. I have seen a lot of my friends struggling to find publications related to their work, but their colleges don't have subscription to those journals, why is knowledge constrained in distribution, what is the point in doing research if cannot be used by others because of silly publication restrictions. Its just like what commercial companies do with their patents in scientific world