The governor’s May budget revision, released Tuesday, remains largely unchanged from the January proposal. Patrick Lenz, the university’s vice president for budget and capital resources, said the university did not receive any additional increases in funding in the May revision.

The budget also calls for a four-year tuition freeze for all students except those in professional schools, a restructuring of debt and discontinuation of a proposed unit cap on state-subsidized courses, which could have affected 2,200 UC students in the next school year.

Student Regent Jonathan Stein and Regent Bonnie Reiss raised concerns about rising costs of professional student fees while undergraduate and other program costs have been held constant.

“Because Prop. 30 passed and because of new state revenues, we’ve been able to hold tuition constant,” Stein said. “In reality, we’ve been able to hold undergraduate and Ph.D tuition constant while professional schools continue to rise.”

The regents also discussed restructuring the university’s debt. The state of California currently takes out bonds on behalf of the university, but UC officials say shifting the responsibility of the debt to the UC system would help lower the debt.

“That debt is greater because the state of California’s credit rating is not as good as ours,” said Brooke Converse, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President. “What we’re asking is that the state of California let us take over and restructure that debt, because if we restructure it, we’ll be able to save $80 million a year.”

The university is also working with the governor to expand facilities at UC Merced, said Nathan Brostrom, the university’s executive vice president for business operations.

“The highest priority is a classroom and academic building at UC Merced,” Brostrom said. “They are now close to 6,000 students, and they do not have space for continued growth unless they get more classroom buildings.”

The regents also approved a plan to build a new aquatics center at UC Berkeley on the current site of the Tang Center parking lot.

Protesters from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299, a union representing patient-care workers at UC medical centers, also interrupted early in the meeting for about 45 minutes to protest in favor of higher pay and increased staffing.

On Thursday, the regents will meet in closed sessions to discuss collective bargaining matters and lawsuits related to the UC system.

Staff writer Virgie Hoban contributed to this report. 

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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If approved, the restraining order would prohibit the two-day strike planned by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299. According to a statement released by the UC Office of the President on Friday, strikes that pose an imminent threat to public health and safety are illegal under state law, and the university believes the strike would improperly withhold health care from the public.

Dianne Klein, a UC spokesperson, said that if the union cared about patient safety, it would not endanger patients by striking.

“This (strike) is one of their tactics to get what they want, which is a special deal for their workers,” Klein said. “That is not only unfair but fiscally irresponsible.”

The strike comes amid ongoing contract negotiations that began in June 2012. The university proposed a pension reform that would increase contributions toward pension benefits from both the university and employees, but AFSCME 3299 rejected these reforms, arguing that the university is prioritizing pensions over patient care.

According to Todd Stenhouse, spokesperson for AFSCME 3299, the university is prioritizing executive pension benefits instead of adequate patient care and staffing.
“We are seeing the university cut corners in ways that are so dangerous for patients,” said Kathryn Lybarger, president of AFSCME 3299.

AFSCME 3299 has established a Patient Protection Task Force to care for patients during the strike, but that it is something in which the university refuses to participate, according to Stenhouse.

During pension reform negotiations, AFSCME 3299 asked for caps on executive pension benefits, which the university would not discuss, according to Lybarger.

“Right now, these executives are going to retire on upwards of $300,000,” Lybarger said. “That’s a lot of money to live on for doing nothing.”

The university filed a similar restraining order in July 2008 in response to a planned AFSCME 3299 strike. The court approved the restraining order, but the union went ahead with the strike.

“If the court says you are prohibited from striking and they go ahead and do it anyway, they are breaking the law,” Klein said. “We hope there is not a strike. We are prepared for one.”

University Professional and Technical Employees, another UC medical workers union, also held a demonstration Wednesday at the five UC medical centers.

AFSCME 3299 also held a sit-down protest at Wednesday’s UC Board of Regents meeting in Sacramento, resulting in the arrest of 13 demonstrators.

“We are in this fight to win real patient protection,” Lybarger said. “It’s not an option to emerge from this fight without having won real gains for our patients.”

Contact Tara Hurley at thurley@dailycal.org.

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The results come from the systemwide 2012 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, with questions on academic engagement, community involvement and financial background.

According to the survey results, 82 percent of UC students responding said they were content with their overall education. Despite more than $900 million in state funding cuts to the university over the last five years, this percentage has remained relatively constant since 2006.

“I think that shows that despite the economic recession and the decreased funding to UC in recent years, we’ve been able to continue serving our students really well,” said Shelly Meron, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, in an email.

But while academic approval has remained relatively constant, students are increasingly unhappy with the cost of getting a degree. The survey found that student satisfaction with the value of a UC education is now at 60 percent, down from 71 percent in 2006. The percent of students worried about the cost of tuition has increased from 64 to 71 percent over the last two years alone.

“Obviously we’re concerned about tuition increases, and we’re continuing to work with state legislators and the governor to resolve UC’s funding issues,” Meron said in the email.

Sereeta Alexander, research analyst at the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis, said that the campus’s own survey of new students has found similar results — that students are concerned about financing their education in the next few years.

“(The results) show that we should be thinking about how we should support students more with financial aid and scholarships — even if tuition and fees are rising,” Alexander said.

CalSERVE Senator and Executive Vice President-elect Nolan Pack said that higher student costs may reduce campus involvement, another issue studied in the survey.

“The more a college education costs, the more students have to work while they’re in school and the less time they have to do other things like public service or civic engagement,” Pack said. “The more we increase tuition, the more we’re chipping away at the holistic college experience.”

Pack also criticized possible plans to make tuition more affordable through online education, pointing out that the high academic satisfaction rates show that students value a classroom education.

“It’s clear that the quality of a UC education remains very high, but the state’s continued divestment from higher education puts that at risk,” Pack said. “The fact that students are overwhelmingly satisfied with faculty and instruction should say something. Online education … contradicts the experience of being in the classroom.”

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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The revised budget, commonly known as the May revision, reflects new spending proposals from state legislators, changes in the state’s economic outlook and decreases in federal government funding since the governor’s first proposed budget in January.

The UC Board of Regents will discuss the revised budget at its meeting in Sacramento on Wednesday.

If approved by the Legislature, the governor’s budget will increase funding for each of the state’s higher education systems above the prior year’s funding. The university will receive an increase of up to 20 percent in General Fund appropriations — about $511 million — over the next four years.

According to the budget, these changes will represent an increase of about 10 percent in total operating funds, including tuition and fee revenues.

The budget includes about $25.4 billion in total funding for higher education in the coming fiscal year, $400 million less than was proposed in January.

In addition, a previously proposed unit cap has also been removed from the budget following rejection from the state Legislature. Faculty groups and lawmakers criticized the 150 percent unit cap on state-subsidized courses for its “one-size-fits-all” model and argued that the mandate would not be as effective as individual campus caps.

According to the UC Office of the President, the unit cap would have impacted 2,200 UC students in the 2013-14 academic year.

“UC will continue working with the governor and the Legislature to address critical funding needs,” said Patrick Lenz, the university’s vice president for budget and capital resources, in a statement.

According to the governor’s press release, the budget is expected to remain balanced in the coming years. Spending cuts enacted over the past two years and new temporary funds brought in by Proposition 30, which was passed by voters last November, are expected to allow the state budget to reduce the state’s debt to $4.7 billion by 2017 — a reduction of more than 86 percent.

“This budget builds a solid foundation for California’s future by investing in our schools, continuing to pay down our debts and establishing a prudent reserve,” Brown said in a press release. “But California’s fiscal stability will be short-lived unless we continue to exercise the discipline that got us out of the mess we inherited.”

Additional elements of the revised budget include changes to the state’s public school funding system, investment in job-creation programs and an additional $72 million for county probation departments to compensate for their increased responsibilities as legislatures try to reduce the state’s prison population.

Brown will now have to convince the state Legislature that his plans for higher education and the state merit passage. After discussion from state senators and assembly members, the budget will be finalized in June and take effect July 1, the start of the 2013-14 fiscal year.

Alex Berryhill covers higher education. Contact her at aberryhill@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @berryhill93.

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The group assembled to oppose recent proposals to develop the southern portion of an Albany plot of land known as the Gill Tract, owned by the Regents of the University of California. The proposals suggest developing the lot into a senior housing complex and a national chain grocery store, Sprouts Farmers Market.

Occupy the Farm activists said they would rather see the land developed into a urban farm that could be used to educate the community and to conduct research on how to improve soil quality.

“This piece of land is unparalleled in terms of being an agricultural resource,” said Matthew McHale, an Occupy the Farm spokesperson. “We envision not only a resource for growing food but for community resilience.”

Around 1 p.m., Occupy the Farm activists congregated in front of Albany City Hall before marching south on San Pablo Avenue to the portion of the Gill Tract north of Monroe Street. The group walked behind a banner that read “Sprout Farms Not Grocery Stores.”

Several cars met the group at the property, bringing truckloads of dirt, an assortment of plants as well as some chickens and goats. The group tilled the soil and planted hundreds of plants, including lemon cucumbers, mustard greens and Yukon Gold potatoes, into the afternoon.

Saturday’s movement is the first major effort to cultivate the Gill Tract since last spring, when the group assembled farther north on the property to protest the development of the same senior housing facility and a different grocery store, Whole Foods Market. In September, Whole Foods canceled its plans to build on the Gill Tract, citing project delays.

Urban-farm activists continued to break into the property throughout the summer and into the fall to care for their crops, arguing that the land should be accessible to the community because it is owned by a public university.

The northern portion of the tract farmed last spring is a Class 1 agricultural land, and it is extremely nutrient-rich and conducive to farming. In September, it was placed under the purview of the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources and is currently prepared and ready for planting, according to Claire Holmes, campus associate vice chancellor of public affairs.

This spring, farmers hope to prove that the southern plot of land, which was once host to military barracks, is also agriculturally viable.

Some community members and Albany city officials, however, believe the land would be better be served with commercial development that would bring economic growth to the area.

“We could bring life to San Pablo,” said Albany Mayor Peggy Thomsen.

Campus officials issued a statement Thursday urging city residents to prepare for an occupation, noting that they would closely monitor the situation. UCPD was at the tract on Saturday and advised the group several times that the property is closed to the public, but no action was taken.

Last May, three weeks after the initial occupation began, nine Occupy the Farm protesters were arrested — two who remained on the Gill Tract and seven who were outside the entrances to the encampment. Charges were never filed against the protesters.

Some Albany community members staged a counterprotest on Saturday, riding bicycles around the Gill Tract and carrying signs with the name “Occupy the Farm” struck out.

Albany resident and counterprotester Preston Jordan sees Occupy the Farm’s actions as an attempt to circumvent a democratic system that is already working.

“There are issues throughout history that call for civil disobedience,” Jordan said. “But I don’t think this calls for that.”

Occupy the Farm activists set up an encampment Saturday night on the property, and six tents were still standing as of 10 a.m. Sunday morning.

In the immediate future, the group plans to continue planting, cleaning up the land and being “good stewards,” McHale said.

“Farming is about the long game — setting down roots,” McHale said. “Putting plants in the ground is hope. It is inherently oriented toward the future.”

Megan Messerly covers city government. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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In a study analyzing public universities’ enrollment data, professors Bradley Curs and Ozan Jaquette found that as nonresident student enrollment increased, the number of Pell Grant recipients and underrepresented minority students decreased, particularly at research universities such as UC Berkeley.

“Flagship public universities have been a source of social mobility for low-income and underrepresented minority students who cannot afford out-of-state and private tuition,” the paper reads. “Non-resident enrollment growth — chiefly motivated by revenue concerns — may have the unintended consequence of diminish(ing) socioeconomic and racial diversity.”

The research follows years of debate on the role of nonresident students in the UC system. Nonresident tuition has been increasingly looked to as an alternative source of revenue for the university in light of declining state support. Seeking increased revenue due to budget constraints, UC Berkeley set a goal of increasing nonresident enrollment to 20 percent, which the campus expects to reach next school year.

Nonresident enrollment at UC Berkeley has risen 10 percent since the 2007-08 school year, from 8 percent to 18 percent. UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore said that despite this, the campus has maintained diversity.

“Our data clearly shows that our Pell Grant numbers have remained steady, that our underrepresented minority numbers have been steady and actually increasing,” Gilmore said. “There has always been a commitment to making sure that we were increasing diversity.”

According to the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis, Berkeley’s African American population increased from 148 in the 2009-10 school year to 165 this year. The Chicano/Latino population increased from 589 to 612 in the same period.

Currently, out-of-state students in the UC system pay around $23,000 more in tuition fees than in-state students. Curs and Jaquette’s research identified high nonresident fees as a filter that discourages many low-income nonresident students from attending out-of-state schools.

“(Nonresident enrollment) crowds out low-income people more than racial minorities,” Jaquette said. “People are very aware of racial diversity, but class diversity often doesn’t get highlighted as much.”

Still, some students have raised concerns about the relatively static underrepresented minority numbers on the UC Berkeley campus. Kirk Coleman, executive director of the UC Berkeley bridges Multicultural Resource Center and a campus senior, said increased nonresident enrollment would inevitably exclude underrepresented minority students.

“It’s problematic that (the campus) thinks where the numbers are now are OK,” Coleman said. “If you look at (underrepresented minority) populations based on state demographics, they are significantly higher than how they are represented on campus. I think that shows where the university is going — not towards more diversity but towards making more money.”

Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri said the campus considered a potential decrease in diversity when it established the 20 percent nonresident enrollment goal but that diversity has remained steady despite substantial growth in nonresident enrollment.

“The socioeconomic piece is pretty obvious because it’s a lot more expensive to come as an out-of-state student, and the financial aid is much lower,” Basri said. “It hasn’t really had an impact on diversity so far. I’m a little surprised by that, but since people were aware of that issue, there was an extra effort made (to improve diversity).”

UC Student Regent Jonathan Stein has spoken out against increasing nonresident enrollment in the past, pointing to the possibility of nonresident “clustering,” a phenomenon in which out-of-state students flock to top-ranking schools such as UCLA and UC Berkeley more than to other UC campuses. Student Regent-designate Cinthia Flores echoed this sentiment, pointing to the university’s public mission of access and inclusion.

“The primary purpose of the UC is it is supposed to be a system that provides Californians with an affordable education, and a big part of owning up to that commitment is making sure the diversity of California is shown in the UC system,” Flores said. “When you have such an out-of-state-student-focus strategy, the demand for out-of-state students does not translate throughout the system … Then that creates a shortage in the system.”

Libby Rainey covers higher education. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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The regents will also review a special report by UC President Mark Yudof on the current and future challenges facing the university, a report on the university’s academic performance and a proposed design for a new aquatics center at the UC Berkeley campus.

On Wednesday morning, the board will hear an update on Brown’s revised budget, which reflects new revenue estimates and the effects of new proposals by the state Legislature on the budget.

Later that day, the Committee on Educational Policy will hear a report on “academic performance indicators” at the University of California. The report summarizes two decades of statistics collected from the 10 UC campuses and finds that despite declining state support, the university has continued to excel by a number of performance indicators, including graduation rates and number of students enrolled.

Over the last two decades, four-year graduation rates have increased substantially. The entering class of 2007 had a graduation rate of 60 percent, up from 37 percent for the entering class of 1992, according to the report.

The report also recommends that state legislators give the university and individual campuses greater flexibility, authority and resources. The positive outcomes seen over the last two decades show that the university can function better independent of the state, the report says.

The committee will also discuss a proposal to increase investment in the university’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources for new research that includes work on invasive pests and diseases, childhood obesity and sustainable food projects.

The Committee on Grounds and Buildings will vote on a proposed design for a new aquatics center on the UC Berkeley campus. The $15 million project, which was announced last month, will be funded entirely by Cal Aquatic Legends, an independent nonprofit donor group founded to raise money for the project. The center would only be used for athletic training.

The project requires an amendment to the UC Berkeley 2020 Long Range Development Plan, which the Committee on Grounds and Buildings will be asked to certify and approve.

The Committee on Finance will vote on the 2013-14 financing of Cap-Equip, a universitywide program that aims to restructure capital financing and save money on research, telecommunications and software equipment. The committee will also vote on maintaining the expenditure rate for the university’s endowment pool.

The Committee on Oversight of the Department of Energy Laboratories will hear updates from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on climate research, a new X-ray laser that determines protein structures and a recent grant from the Department of Energy for the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville. In April, the department promised about $25 million annually through 2018 for the development of new biofuels.

On Thursday, after a public comment period, the regents will hold closed meetings with the Committee on Compensation and the Committee on Finance as well as other regents-only meetings.

Alex Berryhill covers higher education. Contact her at aberryhill@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @berryhill93.

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Yudof, who is set to step down in August after almost five years in office, leaves behind a mixed legacy including both tuition increases and improvements to financial aid programs. Only months after taking office, Yudof faced a plunging economy and harsh statewide cuts to the UC system.

Tuesday’s event was part of a speaker series on California’s future and was organized by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy research institution.

Among the several topics discussed at the event, Yudof addressed his relationship with Gov. Jerry Brown, the challenge of delineating responsibilities between individual UC campuses and the UC Office of the President and most importantly, he said, the burdensome pension obligations that affect the UC system’s finances.

“There are many challenges facing higher education,” Yudof said. “The first is, of course, financial issues and the budget.”

He also addressed what he considers other pressing issues, including the fact that the UC system should be enrolling 30,000 more students than it currently does while also providing more opportunities for low-income and underrepresented students.

These problems do not have simple solutions, Yudof said. He noted that reforming the UC’s pension system and increasing graduation and transfer rates are multifaceted issues that require an executive.

Yudof also talked about the role of online education in the UC system, tentatively proposing a program in which students rejected from the university could take a year of online courses with the intent of transferring. But this would have its own set of financial aid implications for students who cannot afford computers, Yudof said — another example of the complexity of improving educational outcomes.

His advice to the next UC president, who has not yet been selected, was to continue searching for nonstate sources of funding and, more importantly, to understand how to work with the other regents and chancellors of the university.

Finding any remedy was only “10 percent of the solution,” Yudof said. “The other 90 percent is selling it to people.”

He also lent his own advice to incoming students.

“Study what interests you,” Yudof said. “Make sure you call your parents at least once a week. Find a subset of people on campus who share your interests, because universities can be large. They will help you keep your sense of belonging.”

Contact Sophie Ho at sho@dailycal.org.

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The vote to strike — which passed with more than 97 percent support — comes after the university and the union failed to come to an agreement during ongoing contract negotiations, which began last June. The union alleges that the university’s prioritization of profits reduces patient-care quality, while the university argues that the strike is an attempt to gain bargaining leverage and divert attention from the union’s refusal of pension reforms during negotiations.

The suggested pension reforms include an increased contribution from both the university and employees toward the costs of pension benefits as well as revised eligibility rules for retirement health benefits, according to Shelly Meron, a media specialist with the UC Office of the President.

However, AFSCME, which represents nearly 13,000 patient-care workers from medical centers and student health centers across all 10 UC campuses, said the union is striking because the suggested pension reforms are another attempt by the university to maintain high-paying executive pensions. Representatives from AFSCME say those funds should instead be used for patient care.

“At this point, (the university has) certainly made clear they will not negotiate until we agree to protect their entitlements,” said AFSCME 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger. “Pension reform subsidizes their massive benefits. We are not going to stand for that.”

Such pensions and high-paying executive salaries have caused understaffing and cost-cutting in the UC medical system that is impacting the quality of patient care, said union spokesperson Todd Stenhouse.

The union says these new cuts and financial decisions have left the medical centers unable to provide the care patients deserve due to unnecessary stress and inadequate training on the use of hazardous materials in patient-care areas.

“The (university) needs to get its priorities straight,” Stenhouse said. “They need to stop this idea that executive salaries are their top fiscal priority … These are publicly funded hospitals that are here to serve California, and we are here to make sure they stay the crown jewels of the state.”

However, Meron asserts that the pension reforms are needed to ensure the university’s pension programs are financially sustainable.

“We are dealing with a $24 billion unfunded liability,” she said. “We want to make sure the (pension programs are) sustainable over time.”

In a press release from April, the university stated that AFSCME is trying to use patient care as a tool in contract negotiations, which can endanger the patients’ health. Meron said the university will prepare contingency plans for medical center operations — which include patient care — in case of a strike.

But a report published by AFSCME last month alleged that the UC hospitals have increased executive payroll by $100 million since 2009 and are the ones endangering patients by cutting care jobs and outsourcing them to less experienced workers.

The union is also preparing to take patient protection measures, including a 10-day notice of a strike and the formation of a Patient Protection Task Force in the event of an emergency.

The dates and duration of the union strike have not yet been finalized.

Alyssa Neumann covers city government. Contact her at aneumann@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @AlyNeumann.

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article may have implied that the University of California will prepare contingency plans for patients. In fact, the university will prepare contingency plans for medical center operations, which include patient care.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the vote to strike came after the University of California and the union failed to come to an agreement during contract negotiations last June. In fact, the vote to strike comes after the university and union failed to come to an agreement during ongoing contract negotiations, which began last June.

A previous version of this article also incorrectly quoted Meron as saying that pension that the UC wants to make sure the UC medical centers are sustainable over time. In fact, she said that the university wanted to make sure that pension programs are sustainable over time.

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“We need your help,” the message reads, directing intrigued users to the website of The Open Access Initiative at Berkeley.

In stark blue lettering, the initiative lays out its cause: “Public funding demands public benefit … We should not give our rights away for free.” And finally, “We must not lose access to our own research.”

This local effort is part of the broader open access movement, which has gained momentum in recent years. The movement is especially appealing to science and technology researchers who say their work is being used for the profit of publishers that contribute little to the research or editing process.

Open access has even garnered support at the state and federal levels, including in the Obama administration, which mandated in February that all science papers funded with federal dollars be made accessible to the public within a year of publication.

In California, a bill recently introduced in the state Assembly, AB 609, would require public institutions like UC Berkeley that receive state funds for research to make the results of that research freely available online to the public.

“(My job) is to tell people that this is an issue,” said state Assemblymember Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, who authored the bill. “This research acts as a building block for learning and innovation, and we need to provide access to it if we want our students to be the best and brightest.”

A broken system

The University of California recently announced its support for AB 609, saying in a statement that the increasing cost of journal subscriptions often restricts access to research results, which “runs counter to the spirit in which UC faculty, researchers and students undertake their scholarly activity.”

“I think we have a system that’s broken,” said university librarian Tom Leonard. “Libraries were established in the first place for people to use freely, so if we have a situation where libraries can’t afford to buy these publications, it really flips the library idea on its head.”

Currently, the university spends around $30 million annually on access to 7,500 academic journals, according to UC spokesperson Steve Montiel. He noted, however, that individual campus libraries may purchase other titles on their own.

Brain Research, published by Elsevier, and The Journal of Comparative Neurology from Wiley are the most expensive journals to which the university subscribes — it spends $300,000 on those two journals alone, Montiel said.

Figures like these have compelled researchers, administrators and librarians to demand policy changes, citing wasteful spending of taxpayer money and the moral obligation of researchers to provide the results of their scholarship to the public free of charge.

The way UC Berkeley biology professor Michael Eisen sees it, there is no reason academic texts should not be publicly accessible. In fact, he says, researchers should be “embarrassed” if they publish studies — oftentimes funded by taxpayer money — in closed-access journals, unavailable to other researchers or interested members of the public.

Eisen likens this role of the publisher to that of an obstetrician who delivers the “baby” of the researcher. The obstetrician then says, “I deliver the baby, I own the baby and you can pay a certain amount of money every year to keep the baby.”

“It’s exactly this kind of business transaction involved in the publishing business,” Eisen said. “They play a role in the process of delivering ‘the baby,’ but at the end of the day, the parents own the baby, not the doctor.”

Access denied

While Eisen and others in academia have been pointing fingers at the publishing industry for years, those outside the traditional academic sphere have begun to take up the cause.

Most prominent was open access activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this year after being charged with multiple felonies for downloading millions of academic articles on the online database JSTOR with the intent of making them freely available on the Internet. Swartz faced up to 35 years in prison if convicted.

Many were horrified by this apparent case of prosecutorial overreach, and Swartz quickly became the movement’s martyr, of sorts.

The Open Access Initiative, founded by UC Berkeley undergraduates Tony Chen and Rodrigo Ochigame, is attempting to make the case for open access to those who might normally be uninterested in such issues. The initiative has been reaching out to students as well as faculty and staff members to impel them to take action on moral grounds.

“We believe knowledge is a fundamental human right,” Chen said. “At this well-endowed and prestigious institution, we have access to these materials, but many people do not have access like we do.”

As things currently stand, an individual can only access academic articles in closed-access journals if he or she pays for a subscription or has access through an affiliated university or organization. UC Berkeley students have unlimited access to many journals — including those aggregated in JSTOR and other publication databases.

According to Library Journal, the most expensive journals are those related to science, technology and medicine. The average price of a subscription to a chemistry journal, for example, is more than $4,000 — and that’s for just one journal. Many journals are focused on narrow topics like space physics or heterocyclic chemistry, forcing researchers to subscribe to multiple journals to access the full range of research in their fields.

Even more concerning is the rapid rate of increase in journal prices. Between 2012 and 2013, the average journal price rose by 6 percent — on top of the 6 percent that prices increased in the previous year, according to Library Journal.

“(Publishers) should be paid for their role in the process, but the simple idea behind the open access movement is that there’s no reason why publishers should control research literature — it serves no one’s interest,” Eisen said. “The system exists only because we let it exist.”

However, some publishers say there is good cause for these price increases.

Journal price increases reflect increases in global research budgets and outputs, said Tom Reller, Elsevier’s vice president of Global Corporate Relations, in an email. He noted that countries around the globe are investing more in research, which in turn has resulted in more articles being submitted to and published in journals.

Elsevier is the largest publisher of academic journals, publishing more than 2,000 journals, including some of the most prestigious, like The Lancet.

In 2012, Elsevier was the target of an international boycott by scholars who accused the publisher of hindering public access to research because of the exorbitant price of many of its journals.

“I don’t think those costs have ‘shot up so much’,” Reller said. “In fact, on an article-by-article basis, the costs per download have declined each year as electronic dissemination continues to proliferate and improve.”

Reller emphasized that Elsevier supports open access, citing the company’s nearly 40 fully open-access journals and more than 1,600 hybrid titles that accept open-access articles.

However, according to Nestande, a lobbyist from Elsevier’s parent company, Reed Elsevier, indicated that the company was opposed to AB 609. The Association of American Publishers also publicly testified in opposition to the legislation, Nestande said.

Challenges moving forward

Because it seems unlikely that publishers will lead the charge for open access, activists and researchers like Eisen have taken up the issue for themselves.

Eisen was one of the first promoters of open access and, in fact, is the founder of the Public Library Of Science, which publishes the biggest open-access journal in the world.

According to Judson King, director of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, the basic difficulty with open access is finding a financial model that works.

“There are costs, so who is going to pay them?” he said. “The word ‘open access’ means the user of the information does not pay — anyone can get ahold of the information without having to pay it.”

The PLOS model, in which authors pay a relatively minimal fee up front to get their work published, is becoming the most common form of open-access journal, King said. Grants that fund the original research can be used to pay this fee as well. Eisen hopes that, eventually, universities will cover the costs, repurposing just a portion of the millions they already spend on access to subscription-based journals.

However, while open access has been largely successful in the sciences, the movement has been almost nonexistent in the humanities.

“It’s very clear what open access means for science, (which gets) published in journals,” King said. “It’s less clear what that model would be for books, and the humanities (publishes) much more books.”

Currently, fewer open-access publishing outlets exist for humanities than for the hard sciences, said Molly Van Houweling, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law and an expert on intellectual property.

Additionally, humanities and social science journals have not increased in price nearly as much as science, technology and medical journals, making price increases not as much of a concern for researchers in those areas. As a result, open access has been less embraced within these fields, although many humanities researchers say they are theoretically supportive of such a policy.

“I think my UC Berkeley colleagues across all disciplines do scholarship at least in part for the purpose of disseminating it to society at large and benefiting the public,” Van Houweling said. “The challenge is figuring out how to accomplish that using sustainable publishing models.”

However, Eisen says PLOS has already done that and is a “profitable nonprofit.”

Millennials leading the charge

While many scholars have expressed support for open access in years past, the movement’s current momentum can be traced to the place where open access exists — the Internet.

In the age of Wikipedia and Reddit, in which trading information and ideas has become expected, some believe it is inevitable that the open access movement has struck the right chords.

“The reason why open access has gained popular currency is that we’re seeing a rise in the culture of collaborative technology,” Chen said. “Journal and journal database prices have increased at an alarming rate as library funds have shrunk. The Internet publishing model has rendered these paradigms antiquated.”

Sara Grossman is a news editor. Contact her at sgrossman@dailycal.org.

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