Open Access to Research Is in the Public Interest, PLoS Biol Bookmark and Share

Excerpt: (...) As scientists, scientific literature is our lifeblood, because only by reading our colleagues' work can we know where the cutting edge of knowledge currently lies and hence where our work should be directed. Yet increasingly, subscriptions to the very journals that we must read are becoming too expensiveâ€"often in the thousands of dollars. The availability of the information vital to our research is needlessly restricted by the publishers of the scientific literature, who are mainly large commercial entities for whom maximizing profits is their priority. Fortunately, help is at hand. The big “if” remains whether this will happen. (...)