A preprint of Peter Suber\’s Removing the Barriers to Research:
An Introduction to Open Access for Librarians is now available:
The serials pricing crisis is now in its fourth decade. We\’re long past the point of damage control and into the era of damage . . . One might expect relief from digital technologies that allow the distribution of perfect copies at virtually no cost. But so far these technologies have merely caused panic among traditional publishers, who have reacted by laying a second crisis for libraries and researchers on top of the first. The new crisis is still in its first decade and doesn\’t yet have a name. Let me call it the permission crisis . . .
I bring up these two crises because I will argue that open access will solve them both. Since the pricing crisis is already well-known, let me elaborate for a moment on the permission crisis. You know what you could do in a world in which the pricing crisis were solved . . .
This essay will appear in the forthcoming issue of College and Research Library News. Among other
things, Peter Suber is the editor of the blog Free Online Scholarship News.
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