Well, here's something that really makes my blood curdle. The Royal Society has taken a stand against open access journals. Their argument is the standard one that confuses means with ends. The presence of these free journals will make it less likely that scientists will pay high prices for paper ones. Therefore, we must eliminate the open access journals to protect the proprietary ones. It's really sad for me to see the Royal Society lumbering on like all the other dinosaurs. After all, the historically revolutionized scientific discourse by offering the first real scientific journal, Philosohpical Transactions, and made every effort to get that journal into the hands of scientists everywhere--even "foreign" ones. Of course, back then they were progressive and fighting against so many repressive nationalist forces, from home and abroad. They were also converting science from one of secrecy to one of full disclosure (making a gamble that scientists would trade their knowledge for good publicity and notoriety). However, I guess we should note that the first editor of PT, Henry Oldenburg, made his living editing, printing, and selling the journal--so I suppose there has always been this profit motive burning deep in the bowels of the RS. My guess is that at such a time when most scientists were leisure-class "gentlemen" of substantial private means, a few pounds for a journal was nothing to go on about. Now that most scientists are leisure-class men and women with substantial private and public means (in the form of grants), a few thousand dollars (or more!) for a print journal is nothing to go on about.

A spokesman for the Royal Society said: "We think it conceivable that the journals in some disciplines might suffer. Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?"

I think a more honest question from the RSA would be, "How could we line our pockets if the papers appear free of charge?"