Open Access Boosts Journal Availabilty

Over the past several weeks, Baker-Berry Library has hosted a variety of events aimed at informing students and faculty about the open access movement, a national campaign to make scholarship freely accessible worldwide. The events culminated in Open Access Week, which concludes Friday.

The open access movement, triggered by a recent increase in the cost of journal subscriptions, has prompted academic institutions across the country to reevaluate their publishing practices. The high cost of academic journal subscriptions, known as the “serial crisis,” prohibits many people from reading published research. Supporters of the open access movement argue that free access could allow people who would otherwise be excluded from academia to engage with scholarly work.

In recent years, publishers have bundled articles together in journals and sold them to institutions at high rates. The costs are even higher for universities because they supply the published material to an entire campus of students and faculty.