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U.C. System and Springer Agree To CC-Licensed Journal Articles
NeoSkink writes "The University of California and Springer Science+Business Media have reached an agreement to provide open access for articles submitted by UC-affiliated authors. In a press release, the UC writes: 'Under the terms of the agreement, articles by UC-affiliated authors accepted for publication in a Springer journal beginning in 2009 will be published using Springer Open Choice with full and immediate open access. There will be no separate per-article charges, since costs have been factored into the overall license. Articles will be released under a license compatible with the Creative Commons (by-nc: Attribution, Non-commercial) license. In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library's eScholarship Repository.'"
No, actually non-commercial in this context means that you can't copy the articles themselves and make money off doing that, not that the information contained within those articles cannot be applied to commercial ventures.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Otherwise a good chunk of papers produced by research done in the UC system will be submitted to Springer journals first.
If I write a paper, I'm going to try to get it in the best journal I can so it looks better on my resume. Open access does not factor into it. I'm not about to sell myself short and publish in a lower impact journal, and hurt my career, just to make sure everyone can access it free of charge.
That said, springer does have some high impact journals, and there could be other details I'm missing to sweeten the deal. All else being equal though, if faced with a choice between higher value publication and open access, it's not a question, and won't be for many other people.