Scholarly Publishing Commons^™

Open Access Outreach: Smash Vs. Suasion, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Some librarians became open access (OA) supporters because they were outraged—and budgetarily hamstrung—by certain commercial publishers' artificially inflated prices. (We know they are artificially inflated, unjustified by production costs, because these publishers have jaw-dropping profit margins, higher than those of Disney, Starbucks, Google, and even Apple.) Other librarians were won over to OA by its more altruistic aspects, by the promise of a world rich in knowledge. However, in their outreach to patrons, librarians cannot rely on the arguments that swayed them. What convinced a librarian to embrace OA may not convert a student, a faculty member, or an administrator. …