The solution of authors voting with their feet is a very long-term one which does not address what's already in the literature but currently behind a paywall. Furthermore the authors with the highest impact are also the ones most likely to operate in a community all of whose members belong to institutions with subscriptions. Some of them (I have no idea what fraction) may even prefer the additional ivory-tower isolation provided by paywalls, so as not to have deal with outsiders, and many more will not be strongly motivated to change the status quo. I recall a meeting a few years ago at which Andy Odlyzko, who'd looked into the problem in some detail, offered economic reasons for why the status quo was hard to change, though I don't recall any calibration by him on where to draw the line at gouging. This issue has a particularly large impact on the current hot-button topic of global warming, where there are a lot of technically minded people without access to the relevant technical journals being cited on blogs by people on either side of the debate who do have access. Many of you will have noticed that a widespread feeling, particularly strong in the US and Australia, has been developing lately that there's a conspiracy between governments and scientists to tamper with the free market economy by inappropriately steering funding towards alternative energy proponents and providers. Locking influential articles behind a paywall has the unfortunate side effect of amplifying this feeling. For that and other hot-button topics (vaccination and autism, aluminium and Alzheimer's, safety of nanotechnology, etc.), a more immediate and reliable solution would be welcome, in addition to the solution of voting with your feet. The problem is not merely academic, it's also a serious social problem. Vaughan Pratt On 9/1/2011 7:11 AM, Mike Stay wrote:
Another page with the same viewpoint: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html
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