Closing in on Open Access

摘要

In the last year, the anger and frustration simmering in libraries for a decade or more over the growing dysfunction of the scholarly communications system found a voice, a cause, and a cadre of allies around the globe. This time, the voices that said, "No" to the Big Deals were those of faculty members and academic officers at some very prestigious institutions-Cornell, Harvard, the Research Triangle institutions in North Carolina, MIT, and, for a time, the University of California. Theirs were the "no's" heard round the world when the mainstream press, intrigued no doubt by the image of academics defiantly waving nonrenewal letters in the face of corporate giants like Elsevier, picked up the stories. These universities spoke for many when they declared their intent to choose journal titles the old-fashioned way-year by year, title by title, based on the value of the con-tent rather than the size of the package.