Three years ago this month, the MIT Faculty established an Open Access Policy, through which their scholarly articles are made openly available on the web. The faculty’s goal was to “disseminat[e] the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible.”

This goal is being met: downloads from the Open Access Articles Collection, which houses papers under the Policy, have been initiated from nearly every country in the world:

Only one-third of use originated in the United States, and while the top 20 countries account for 85% of the use (including China, India, the UK, Germany, and the Republic of Korea), downloads are widespread. Russia and Brazil each account for about 1% of the use. In a typical month such as December 2011, downloads were requested from all around the world, including (to name just a few) Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Botswana, Cote D’Ivoire, Croatia, Honduras, Malaysia, Malta, Nepal, Qatar, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe.

This news is reported as we mark the third anniversary (on March 18) of the faculty’s precedent-setting policy, the first university-wide faculty policy of its kind in the United States.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy
MIT News Story from the time of the vote on the Policy