March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology will make its research available to the public free of charge, becoming the first U.S. university to mandate the policy, by faculty vote, across all departments.

The unanimous vote, taken March 18, is effective immediately, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university said today in an e-mail. The public will be able to access MIT research articles through a Web site developed by the university’s libraries and Hewlett-Packard Co. in 2002, the e-mail said.

Three schools at Harvard University, also based in Cambridge, have voted in favor of similar policies, with the Kennedy School of Government approving an open-access measure March 10. Harvard Law School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved the proposal last year.

“The vote is a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas,” said faculty chairman Bish Sanyal, a professor of urban development and planning, in the e-mail.

MIT said its policy is based on the one adopted by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It retains non-exclusive publication rights that were normally held exclusively by the journals that publish research papers, for scientists and the universities where they work, the statement said.

University libraries have faced journal subscription rates that are rising faster than that of inflation, the statement said. The MIT Libraries, for example, spend more than three times as much on journal subscriptions today than they did in 1986, it said.

“In the quest for higher profits, publishers have lost sight of the values of the academy,” said MIT Director of Libraries Ann Wolpert. “This will allow authors to advance research and education by making their research available to the world.”

To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 23, 2009 15:33 EDT