Let's Hope This Vampire Doesn't Live Forever

A WSJ editorial bashes the practice of keeping scholarly work locked up in costly academic journals. Crediting Harvard as well as the NIH for their upcoming open-access policies, and PLoS for lighting the way for open-access research publications, the author likens expensive subscriptions to a "vampire that has been sucking dollars out of academic institutions for years." Two reasons, he says, that research should be free is that it's bad for capitalism if it isn’t and good for the developing world if it is. "It's easy to scoff at the rise of Madonna studies and other risible academic excrescences, but a flood of truly important research pours from campuses every day. The infrastructure that produces this work is surely one of America's greatest competitive advantages.