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Reassessing Prospects for the 
Open Access Movement 

Charles A. Schwartz 

Open access may well be a turning point for the scholarly communication 
system, but not on the basis claimed by its advocates. As opposed to the 
claim that open access means a less costly system, in reality it entails 
redundant expenditures and inflationary pressures.The true significance 
of open access, involving processes of institutional development of the 
system, has not entered into the public debate.Such processes are chiefly 
twofold: the adjustment of the open-access movement to the different 
needs and cultures of the various stakeholder groups, and the advent of 
a more complex system architecture that facilitates research productivity 
and scholarly innovation. 

he scholarly communication 
crisis is entering its fourth 
decade. Since the early 1970s, 
it has expanded in scope, 

scale, and complexity as the scholarly 
system itself has developed. The issues 
now range from the declining market for 
the traditional monograph to the emerg-
ing political economy of the networked 
environment but center on journal price 
inflation in the sciences. Given the diver-
sity of the various stakeholder groups 
(university administrators, research 
libraries, learned societies, nonprofit 
presses, publishing conglomerates, and 
the scholars themselves spread over 
hundreds of disciplines), it is li le wonder 
that no one in thirty years has devised a 
generally viable reform proposal. 

Open access has the prospect of becom-
ing a turning point in this state of affairs, 
but not on the basis claimed by its advo-
cates. Indeed, the conventional arguments 

of open access are doubtful, whereas its 
real significance, involving processes of 
institutional development of the scholarly 
system, has not entered into the public 
debate. The basic problem of institutional 
development is the lag of societal (politi-
cal, economic, social, and so on) arrange-
ments behind technological change. The 
open-access movement signifies such a 
lag. It is the rough outline of the system’s 
future by virtue of the technological prog-
ress it represents. What remains to be seen 
are the ways the movement adjusts to the 
differing business interests, publishing 
norms, and professional cultures of the 
stakeholder groups. In systems analysis, 
that process will reflect the diversity 
advantage of each group’s freedom to 
manage constant change and increasing 
environmental complexity.1 

The discussion falls into six main parts. 
The first part outlines the open-access 
movement’s generic business model. 

Charles A. Schwartz is Associate Director of Collection Management at Florida International University; 
e-mail: schwartc@fiu.edu. This article benefited from several reviewers: John Budd, Gail Clement, Blaise 
Cronin, Raym Crow, Marshall Deason, John Ingram, Don Riggs, Tom Sanville, Peter Suber, Laura Wal-
ters, and Stephen Wiberley. 

488 

mailto:schwartc@fiu.edu


 
     

       

      
   

      

       

       
      

     
        

      
     

       
      

 
     

      
       

    
       

    
     

     
     

     
        
       

        
    

     
     

       
    

     

     

 

      
     

      

     

     

     
       

   
   

    

   
     

 
    

      
       

      
       

       
     

     
     

    
      

       
     

     
    

     
 

    
   

      
     

    
      

Reassessing Prospects for the Open-Access Movement 489 

Part two assesses that model in light of 
journal editors’ commentaries. Part three 
describes the economic prospects of open 
access for the system as a whole. The 
next two parts take up the institutional 
development of the system in terms of 
increased architectural complexity and, 
with reference to the journal conglomer-
ates’ Big Deal model, the tipping point 
theory of innovation diffusion. The final 
part provides a summary with a few areas 
for future research. 

Open Access in Its Pure Form 
Open access is not a centralized entity 
but, rather, a cluster of loosely coordi-
nated publishing ventures (e.g., the Pub-
lic Library of Science and its affiliates in 
biology and in medicine) and advocacy 
groups (e.g., Creative Commons, SPARC, 
Public Knowledge). It aims to make freely 
accessible in online journals scientific and 
scholarly research, particularly that done 
with public funding. The movement’s 
strength is the technology that enables 
the sharing of digital resources by the 
global scientific community. Its pas-
sion draws on the universal assent that 
the scholarly communication system 
is neither technologically adequate for 
the research and education enterprise, 
nor financially sustainable for research 
libraries. The movement’s key difficulty 
is on the financial side. As opposed to 
its claim that open access would mean 
a less costly system, in reality, it entails 
redundant expenditures and inflationary 
pressures. 

The generic business model designed 
by advocacy groups has two features: 
copyright stays with authors and insti-
tutions that consent to open access, and 
publishing costs shi  from subscriptions 
to a set of abstractly plausible (or hy-
pothetical) funding sources. For many 
reasons —political and practical, but pri-
marily economic, to preserve the financial 
basis of the print regime—the movement 
does not challenge the for-profit establish-
ment, preferring to label itself “construc-
tive, not destructive.”2 

Complexities and Realties of 
Business Models 
The copyright feature of this model is 
hardly controversial; no change in law 
is called for and most publishers agree 
to limited forms of open access. The dis-
putes concern the funding sources and 
access conditions for articles to be freely 
distributed as public goods. Where the 
movement proposes an array of specula-
tive sources, publishers perceive a paucity 
of realistic options. In their view, of all 
the revenue-generating options listed 
in the movement’s literature—author 
submission and publication fees, print-
subscription profits, advertising, higher 
society membership dues, university fee 
agreements, grants, and value-added 
search services—only the first two are 
readily plausible as long-term strategies. 
The others would not be reliable enough 
for publishers to weather fluctuations in 
the economy.3 

Moreover, the principal funding 
sources, author fees and print profits, 
are likely to be volatile market forces. 
Authors who lack grant support would 
reasonably take into account the size of 
fees in deciding where to submit their 
work. Publishers would attract authors 
by lowering fees, thereby raising li-
brary prices. To preserve library sub-
scription revenues, publishers would 
withhold articles from open access for 
a year or so, already the prevailing 
practice. To attract more manuscripts, 
publishers would broaden the topical 
scope—and physical size—of journals, 
another inflationary pressure on the 
print side. 

Smaller libraries would tend to cancel 
print subscriptions to the price-inflated 
open-access journals, thereby driving 
up prices for larger libraries that must 
maintain subscriptions for the sake of 
researchers’ productivity. If there is 
anything learned from the thirty years’ 
crisis, it is this very pa ern of escalating 
prices for captive-market libraries in the 
wake of successive rounds of nationwide 
cancellations. 



        
       

    
 

   

     

 

     
     

       

   
        

       

     
      

    
   

    

     
   

   
     

   

    

    
     

     
    

   
   

    
     

    

   
    

     
     

      

       
    

     

 490 College & Research Libraries November 2005 

The financial situation of libraries also 
would deteriorate with the open-access 
proposal that universities cover their fac-
ulties’ author fees. It is difficult to see how 
that scheme would be feasible for any but 
the richest institutions unless funding 
was diverted from the library’s budget. 
Indeed, some open-access advocates 
would have libraries cut their collections 
in order to provide financial assistance 
to the movement. The prospect in either 
case would be for local budget crises to 
aggravate the nationwide one.4 

Economic Prospects for Open 
Access 
We have a conundrum. The open-access 
movement cannot be expected to address 
the whole series of factors underlying 
prolongation of inflation since the 1970s. 
Any such strategy to explore new insti-
tutional arrangements needs to focus on 
a ainable goals—in this case, by creating 
an extraordinary online system without 
a ending to a host of collateral issues. Yet, 
scientific and scholarly information as a 
public good is bound to lead to a more 
costly scholarly communication system 
on the whole. It also is likely to turn 
authors in disciplines for which journal 
charges are not the norm into classic util-
ity maximizers. 

The tight relationship between open-
access publishing and print-subscription 
revenue streams has been overlooked or 
ignored in the debate. The claim that open 
access would be less expensive is simply 
based on a few factors that pertain to on-
line publishing as a self-contained activ-
ity (e.g., negligible marginal-production 
costs, the absence of mailing charges). 

The actual structuring of open-access 
operations will be in the hands of those 
publishers who have the right entrepre-
neurial stuff. Each discipline (or com-
munity of practice) will have to devise 
business models that are culturally and 
professionally appropriate, as well as 
financially sustainable. Some standard-
ization may evolve from the diffusion of 
best practices. 

Analogous activities have been under 
way in other areas of the scholarly com-
munication system. To recognize them 
may avoid the situation where, to recall 
a verse of T. S. Eliot, “we had the experi-
ence but missed the meaning.” Digital 
library operations, like open-access 
models, are not based on fixed concepts 
but, rather, on processes that are under 
constant transformation. The political 
economy of digital libraries as community 
spaces in the networked environment is 
an unse led area. There is no universal 
governance or cost-recovery scheme. 
Although many of these spaces resemble 
information commons in which resources 
are public goods, there are constant pres-
sures for their resources to take the char-
acter of market-driven commodities. In 
such respects, the challenges of economic 
sustainability for digital libraries and for 
open-access journals are analogous. 

Open Access and Institutional 
Development: Architectural 
Complexity 
On an altogether different level, open 
access will restructure the scholarly 
communication system. This involves 
the system’s architectural complexity. 
Scholarly communication is a loosely 
coupled system. Pa erns of influence and 
interaction, certainly among the hundreds 
of disciplines, are somewhat responsive, 
but predominately erratic: circumscribed, 
dampened, mutated, infrequent, weak, or 
delayed. (For a university, this is known 
as “organized anarchy.”) 

Loosely coupling is not incidental but, 
instead, provides for essential functions, 
such as flexibility, innovation, and cost 
containment on local levels. Grand re-
form proposals—to the extent that they 
are intended to create a more “rational” 
institutional order—are bound to impair 
the chief strength of loose coupling: its 
capacity to manage constant change and 
increasing environmental complexity. 

As a rule, change occurs in the scholar-
ly communication system within groups, 
hardly across them, resulting in conspicu-



     

    

   

    
    

 
      

      
    

    
      

       
     

      
    

     
        

     
      

     
      

      
       

       
        

       
      

       
      

       
   

     
       

      
        

      
       
       

        
      

 

       
    

      

 
   

    
    

    
      

     
    

   

     
  

        

      

   

       

     
    

      
    

     
      

     

     

Reassessing Prospects for the Open-Access Movement 491 

ous communication gaps and cultural lags 
among the various disciplines and fields. 
Such disconnectedness has been depicted 
in well-known images: C. P. Snow’s “two 
cultures,” Gabriel Almond’s “separate 
tables,” Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s 
“empty universe,” in which learning 
environments have “millions of variables 
that in principle could affect each other 
but most of the time don’t.”5 

System complexity is based on the op-
posite characteristics of Weblike forms of 
communication and interdependence. In 
those respects, the scholarly communica-
tion system has a rather rudimentary archi-
tecture. Open access is designed to develop 
the system’s capacity for cross-disciplinary 
search and retrieval, which will enhance re-
search productivity and scholarly innova-
tion. This technologically robust prospect 
may be a more cogent rationale for the 
open-access movement than the financially 
pale social principle that scholarly articles 
ought to be a public good. 

The premises of this prospect (which 
has not caught the a ention of research-
ers generally) are certain “laws of the 
network.” Metcalf’s Law: the value of the 
network grows as the square of the number 
of users. Kao’s Law: the power of creativ-
ity rises exponentially with the diversity 
and divergence of those connected to the 
network.6 Along such lines, open access 
will reform to some extent the system’s 
characteristic disconnectedness among 
disciplines. Although this capacity for cross-
disciplinarity may be difficult to gauge in 
a comprehensive way, it should become 
evident in one’s own online work. A er all, 
from the perspective of innovation diffusion 
models for loosely coupled systems, such as 
tipping point theory, the hallmark of success 
is the realization that things are connected in 
cool ways that one had not expected. 

Open Access and Institutional 
Development: Tipping Point Theory 
and the Big Deal 
Prospects for the scholarly communica-
tion crisis do not ride on social principles 
about scholarly information as a public 

good. The key sets of factors are economic 
and institutional, exemplified by three 
general types of strategies to reform a 
loosely coupled system. 

The radical type of strategy is to ex-
plore new institutional arrangements: 
the open-access movement. The conser-
vative type is to exploit or refine existing 
arrangements: the Big Deal (described 
below). The intermediate strategy, the 
one proposed here, is for the established 
publishers to steer the reform movement 
with open-access business models that 
take realistic account of their distinct busi-
ness interests and professional cultures. 
Such a strategy reflects the diversity 
advantage in loosely coupled systems 
of each stakeholder group’s freedom to 
manage constant change and increasing 
environmental complexity on its own. 

The conservative type of strategy, to 
exploit or refine existing arrangements, 
came to the fore in the late 1990s with 
the Big Deal, which is a package of most 
or all of a publisher ’s online journals, 
usually for consortia. For the publisher, 
this model has two advantages: it secures 
revenue streams, and it expands access 
to its list of journals at low marginal-
production costs. Such access may lead 
to higher citation rankings for some 
journals, leveraging the package’s overall 
market value. 

For librarians, the Big Deal has led 
to profound ambivalence.7 Although it 
expands collections and makes for more 
predictable budgets, and thus some peace 
of mind, this strategy has what econo-
mists call moral hazards. Price increases, 
though more restrained than in the past, 
are inescapable. Bundling of essential and 
nonessential titles knocks out whatever 
remains of market controls, as well as the 
expert role of library collections staff. On 
the national scale, journal collections be-
come more homogenized, particularly as 
smaller publishers are crowded out (like 
university press monographs) of library 
budgets. Overall, the Big Deal may be a 
“competency trap” in which an organiza-
tion gets locked into arrangements that 



      
    
     

      

      
    

 

      

     

       
     

     

   
 

     

    

      

   

    

     
    

     

     
    

      

    
      

    
    

    
     

     

      
     

      
  
    

      
     

    

      
     

    

    
   

      
     

    
     

       
      

 492 College & Research Libraries November 2005 

alleviate certain pressures but may be ill 
suited in the long run. 

The tipping point model of the diffu-
sion of open-access publishing cropped 
up in 2003 when a European financial 
group issued an “underperform” stock 
rating for the largest journal conglomerate 
(Elsevier) on the basis of the impending 
threat of open access. The report’s indeter-
minate time frame (the next ten years) is 
premised on one of the possible pa erns 
of change in a loosely coupled system: 
delayed, but eventually swi , progression 
(like the “bandwagon effect”).8 

Tipping point theory for the open-ac-
cess movement should be scaled down to 
the gradual tempo of deliberate business 
modeling by publisher or field. Rather 
than the usual portrayal of sudden and 
dramatic transformation, we should ex-
pect a series of bounded tipping points for 
the various disciplines or communities of 
practice. The diffusion of business models 
in the system will resemble the way that 
organizations share best management 
practices: adapting broad ideas to local 
circumstances. 

As for what might be called the Grand 
Tipping Point scenario, in which the 
open-access movement overtakes the Big 
Deal, we are not likely to witness the fall 
of oligopoly but, rather, an extension of 
the same accommodations to preserve 
print revenues. What is likely to dissolve 
is the relative simplicity of the present 
Big Deal, leaving academic libraries with 
a strikingly more complex environment 
for cost-effective serials management, 
given the need to take into account open-
access and print formats for hundreds of 
journals. 

Conclusions 
The subtleties and complications of open 
access for the scholarly communication 
system will take years to emerge. Some 
issues are distant and indistinct, such as 
creation of a “universal online journal 
archive.” Even for immediate issues, 
notably the general reaction of authors 
in disciplines for which journal charges 

are not the norm and the trend of post-
ing abstracts rather than full-text articles 
in supposedly open-access journals, li le 
is known in any systematic or empirical 
way. Five main considerations may lead 
to more coherent discussions, which have 
veered between intellectual drift and 
groupthink over the past thirty years. 

First, in what appears should be an 
historic stage for the system, its potential 
for the kind of institutional development 
that would enable the global sharing of 
digital scholarly and scientific informa-
tion, the most sensible steps are open-
access business models for particular 
disciplines or communities of practice. 
As it is more realistic to aim for change 
within components than across them 
in a loosely coupled system, strategies 
should be designed to produce fairly 
distinct and limited reforms for particu-
lar groups. From the standpoint of the 
system at large, successful models will 
balance local freedom (adaptability and 
innovation to meet the test of cultural 
and problem-specific appropriateness) 
with institutional order (best practices 
and economies of scale). 

Second, such models will not amount 
to an economic revolution, given the pros-
pect of redundant costs and prolongation 
of inflation for the system. Rather, they 
will reflect in diverse ways the essential 
tension between innovation and tradition. 
The future of open-access business mod-
els has at least two traditional, but func-
tional, conditions. One is for the diversity 
advantage of each community to manage 
constant change and environmental com-
plexity on its own. The other condition is 
the nearly inescapable coupling in most 
fields of open-access publishing schedules 
to print-subscription revenue streams, 
which entail online delays and inflation-
ary pressures. 

The movement’s claim that it is “con-
structive, not destructive” reflects this 
tension between innovation (technological 
prospects) and tradition (print revenues). 
Its claim that “any concerted effort by 
governments to make the results of pub-



      
      

      
         
       
        

     

     

 
      
     

    
       

 
     

  
       

     

 

    
 

     

    

       
      

 

    

     

   

     
    

   

    

     

       

    
      

      
 

             
         

 

    
        

 

      

             

 

Reassessing Prospects for the Open-Access Movement 493 

licly funded research freely available will 
ultimately have profound benefits for the 
general public, for scientists, and for sci-
ence itself” may be true on one level but 
does not take into account whether that 
effort will lead to a system that is economi-
cally sustainable for academic libraries. 

Third, the kind of tipping point theory 
of interest here (based on innovation 
diffusion of business models) is wholly 
distinct from the decades’ old notion of 
a tipping point that would come from 
a political rebellion of scholars against 
the publishing conglomerates.9 In our 
view, which was also the theme of a 
recent Association of Research Libraries’ 
conference, scholars are, by and large, 
research-productivity utility maximiz-
ers who have little or no interest in 
participating in schemes for an across-
the-board restructuring of the scholarly 
communication system.10 Their concerns 
are predominately discipline centric. The 
systems analysis presented here may 
rekindle the thirty years’ ideological war, 
though some movement advocates now 
make the astonishing claim that further 
research and analysis is retrograde: “It 
is time to move beyond rehashing tired 
arguments about whether open access 
poses a threat to publishers, professional 
societies, or research budgets. We should 

begin to discuss how best to use what 
open access gives us: the unfe ered avail-
ability of scholarly literature.”11 

Fourth, the architectural revolution in 
the system’s capacity for cross-discipli-
narity will be somewhat muffled by the 
financially induced delays in full articles 
coming online. Such delays are offset 
by the posting of abstracts. That serves 
researchers’ productivity but underscores 
the general dependence of the open-ac-
cess movement on the university library 
(in the same way that the notion of the 
Google revolution leads back to local 
library holdings). The overall prospect 
is mixed: a partially open-access system 
having a more complex architecture that 
promotes research productivity and 
scholarly innovation. 

Finally, any reform proposal should 
take into account the nearly defiant com-
plexity and scale of scholarly communica-
tion. Faced with hundreds of disciplines 
that have their own logics and an inherent 
bent toward self-determination, we have 
reason to be skeptical of grand schemes 
and generic models. The open-access 
movement will progress the way other in-
novations do in a loosely coupled system, 
on the strength of weak ties: the diffusion 
and eventual aggregation of professional 
communities’ best practices. 

Notes 

1. For a general description of institutional development of academic libraries, see Charles A. 
Schwartz, “Restructuring Academic Libraries: Adjusting to Technological Change,” in Restructur-
ing Academic Libraries: Organizational Development in the Wake of Technological Change, ed. Charles 
A. Schwartz. Publications in Librarianship no. 49 (Chicago: Association of College & Research 
Libraries, 1997), 1–30, available online at ALA’s ACRL PIL Web site. 

2. For descriptions of generic open-access business models framed by the movement’s ad-
vocates, see “Budapest Open Access Initiative, Frequently Asked Questions,” available online 
at h p://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm; Open Society Institute, “Guide to Business 
Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal,” edition 2 (July 2003), available online at 
h p://www.soros.org/openaccess/oajguides/oaj_supplement_0703.pdf; Public Library of Science, 
“Open Access,” available online at h p://www.plos.org/about/openaccess.html; John M. Unsworth, 
“The Next Wave: Liberation Technology,” Chronicle Review (Chronicle of Higher Education) 50, no. 
21 (Jan. 30, 2004): B16; Thomas J. Walker, “Two Societies Show How to Profit by Providing Free 
Access,” Learned Publishing 15 (2002): 279–84; Wellcome Trust, “Costs and Business Models in 
Scientific Research Publishing,” available online at h p://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD003185. 
html. 

3. For more cautious and realistic accounts of the complexity of open-access business models, 
see Rick Anderson, “Open Access in the Real World: Confronting Economic and Legal Reality,” 
College & Research Library News 65, no. 4 (Apr. 2004): 206–8, available online at h p://www.ala. 

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 494 College & Research Libraries November 2005 

org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2004/april04/openaccess.htm; B. C. Björk, “Open Access 
to Scientific Publications: An Analysis of the Barriers to Change,” Information Research 9, paper 170 
(2004), available online at h p://informationr.net/ir/9-2/paper170.html; Michael Clarke, “Open 
Sesame? Increasing Access to Medical Literature,” Pediatrics 114 (July 2004): 265–68, available 
online at h p://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/114/1/265 ; Cathy N. Davidson, 
“Understanding the Economic Burden of Scholarly Publishing,” Chronicle of Higher Education 50, 
no. 6 (Oct. 3, 2003): B7; Editorial, “An Open Le er to the Members of ASH: Your Membership 
Dues, Blood, and Open Access to the Scientific Literature,” available online at h p://www.hema-
tology.org/government/policy/open_access.cfm; Editorial, “Open Access and Closed Options,” 
EMBO Reports 5, no. 10 (2004), available online at h p://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v5/n10/ 
pdf/7400270.pdf; Editorial, “Is a Government Archive the Best Option?” Science 291, no. 5512 (Mar. 
23, 2001): 2318–19; Victoria Stagg Ellio , “Journal Free for All: The Electronic Future of Scientific 
Publishing,” American Medical News (Apr. 19, 2004); John W. Ewing, “Open Access to Journals Won’t 
Lower Prices,” Chronicle Review (Chronicle of Higher Education) 51, no. 6 (Oct. 1, 2004): B20; John W. 
Ewing, “No Free Lunches: We Should Resist the Push to Rush Research Online,” Chronicle Review 
(Chronicle of Higher Education) 48, no. 7 (Oct. 12, 2001): B14; Ron Fraser, “Open Access Publishing: 
Is It the Future for Scientific Journals?” SGM: Society for General Microbiology, available online at 
h p://www.socgenmicrobiol.org.uk/pubs/SGMOpenAccess.cfm; Lila Guterman, “The Promise 
and Peril of ‘Open Access,’” Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 21 (Jan. 30, 2004): A10; ———, 
“Critics and Proponents Debate NIH’s Plan to Free Access to Scientific Materials,” Chronicle of 
Higher Education 51, no. 18 (Jan. 7, 2005): A28; ———, “Scientific Societies’ Publishing Arms 
United against Open-Access Movement,” Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 29 (Mar. 26, 2004): 
A20; ———, “The Promise of ‘Open Access’ Publishing,” Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 21 
(Jan. 30, 2004): A10; ———, “NIH Reportedly Is Weakening Its Plan for Free Access to Journal 
Articles,” Chronicle of Higher Education 51, no. 21 (Jan. 19, 2005): A16; Albert Henderson, “Should 
Authors Pay Publishers? The Desperation of the New Paradigm,” Publishing Research Quarterly 
14 (winter 1998/99): 3–8; Jeffrey R. Young, “Boyco  over Lack of Online Access to Journals Is a 
Bust,” Chronicle of Higher Education 48, no. 38 (May 31, 2002): A34. 

4. The notion of libraries giving up acquisition funds to scholarly societies is found in John 
Willinsky, “Scholarly Associations and the Economic Viability of Open Access Publishing,” Journal 
of Digital Information 4, no. 2 (2003), available online at h p://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i02/ 
Willinsky/. The counterargument is by Mark J. McCabe and Christopher M. Snyder, “The Best 
Business Model for Scholarly Journals: An Economist’s Perspective,” News @ Nature.com, Apr. 14, 
2005, available online at h p://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/28.html. 

5. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures: A Second Look (London: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1969); Gabriel 
A. Almond, A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political Science (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 
1990); Herbert A. Simon, “How Complex Are Complex Systems?” PSA: Proceedings of the Biannual 
Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 2 (1976): 7–22. 

6. On laws of the network, see Patrick O. Brown, Michael B. Eisen, and Harold E. Varmus, 
“Why PLoS Became a Publisher,” available online at h p://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline; Ran-
dall Collins, “Toward a Theory of Intellectual Change: The Social Causes of Philosophy,” Science, 
Technology, and Human Values 14, no. 2 (spring 1989): 107–40; Gertrude Himmelfarb, “Revolution 
in the Library,” American Scholar 66 (spring 1997): 197–204; John J. Kao, Jamming: The Art and Dis-
cipline of Business Creativity (New York: Harper Business, 1996); Geoff Mulgan, Connexity: How to 
Live in a Connected World (Boston: Harvard Business, School Pr.), 1997. 

7. For discussions of the Big Deal, see Carl T. Bergstrom and Theodore C. Bergstrom, “The 
Costs and Benefits of Library Site Licenses to Academic Journals,” Proceedings of the National 
Academy of Sciences 101, no. 3 (Jan. 20, 2004): 897–902, available online at h p://www.pnas.org/; 
Kenneth Frazier, “The Librarians’ Dilemma: Contemplating the Costs of the ‘Big Deal,’” D-Lib 
Magazine 7, no. 3 (Mar. 2001), available online at h p://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazer. 
html; Thomas A. Peters, “What’s the Big Deal?” Journal of Academic Librarianship 27 (July 2001): 
302–4; Seth Shulman, “We Need New Ways to Own and Share Knowledge,” Chronicle of Higher 
Education 45, no. 24 (Feb. 19, 1999): A64. 

8. For discussion of tipping point theory, see Mark Granove er, “Threshold Models of Col-
lective Behavior,” American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 6 (1978): 1420–43; Robert P. Parks, “The 
Faustian Grip of Academic Publishing,” Journal of Economic Methodology 9, no. 3 (2002): 317–35; 
Charles A. Schwartz, “The Strength of Weak Ties in Electronic Development of the Scholarly 
Communication System,” College and Research Libraries 55, no. 11 (Nov. 1994): 529–40; John Wil-
linsky and Larry Wolfson, “The Indexing of Scholarly Journals: A Tipping Point for Publishing 
Reform?” Journal of Electronic Publishing 7, no. 2 (Dec. 2001), available online at h p://www.press. 
umich.edu/jep/07-02/willinsky.html. 

9. The publication typically used to bu ress a tipping point of scholars’ rebellion, Andrew 
Odylzko’s “The Economics of Electronic Journals,” First Monday 2, no. 8 (Aug. 1997), available 

http:h�p://www.pnas.org
http:Nature.com


              

          

 

          

 

    

     
 

  

  
 

Reassessing Prospects for the Open-Access Movement 495 

online at h p://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_8/odlyzko/index.html, is actually far more 
balanced and perspective than that. Movement advocates tend to quote only part of a famous 
sentence: “the central problem is that scholars have no incentive to maintain [the current expensive 
system]” without including another part of the sentence: “they currently also have no incentive 
to dismantle it.” 

10. Blaise Cronin, “Scholarly Communication and Epistemic Cultures, Association of Research 
Libraries conference, Scholarly Tribes and Tribulations: How Tradition and Technology are Driving 
Disciplinary Change,” Oct. 17, 2003, available online at www.arl.org/scomm/disciplines/Cronin. 
pdf; Suzanne E. Thorin, “Global Changes in Scholarly Communication,” Association of Research 
Libraries conference, Scholarly Tribes and Tribulations: How Tradition and Technology are Driving Dis-
ciplinary Change, Oct. 17, 2003, available online at h p://www.arl.org/scomm/disciplines/Thorin. 
pdf. 

11. Andy Gass and Helen Doyle, “The Reality of Open-Access Journal Articles,” Chronicle 
Review (Chronicle of Higher Education) 51, no. 24 (Feb. 18, 2005): B13. 

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