Heard on the Net: Open Access Rhapsody

In 2012, Philip Campbell, the editor-in-chief at Nature, noted that Open Access to scientific research is “very compelling.” In 2014, David W. Lewis wrote a compelling article for C&RL entitled: “The Inevitability of Open Access.” For most North American librarians in the past two years, the big deals have endured and there appears to be little change in the United States. While many librarians keep an eye out for various initiatives underway and see colleagues experimenting here and there with article processing charges (APCs), these efforts are largely seen as experiments and not as new ways of doing academic scholarship in North America. In this column, three impacts are noted which take us closer to Lewis’ ‘inevitability’ and outline how shifts are happening that could have larger ripple effects.