Open Access Everywhere

One of the things I love about getting settled into a new semester is when I start to notice the different ways in which the courses I'm taking overlap. It seems like in any given week, I see recurring themes come up in at least two of my classes. It just so happened that the subject of open access publishing came up in my Academic Libraries class a few days ago (it's a WISE course from the University of British Columbia) which I found interesting as I worked to retrieve open source themed articles for our assignment in this this class. Of course, this isn't very surprising given the current serials crisis our field is facing. With the prices of journal subscriptions continuing to climb (mostly due to lack of competition), more and more people are turning to the open access movement for a solution. People usually tend to fall on either side of the open access argument, but most librarians I know are for it. The people who are against open access tend to be academics struggling to publish and wanting the recognition of getting their work into a well regarded journal. I'm hoping as the idea of open access becomes more popular, this sentiment will change and publishing in an open access journal will be considered just as scholarly as the commercial alternatives, which will ultimately lessen the financial burden of libraries.