Most publishers own the rights to the articles in their journals. Anyone who wants to read the articles must pay to access them. Anyone who wants to use the articles in any way must obtain permission from the publisher and is often required to pay an additional fee.
Although many researchers can access the journals they need via their institution and think that access is free, in reality it is not. The institution has often been involved in lengthy negotiations around the price of their site license and reuse of this content is limited.
Paying for access to journals makes sense in the world of print publishing, where providing articles to each reader requires the production of physical copies of articles, but in the online world, with distribution as wide as the internet's reach, it makes much less sense.
Hi Faisal,
Your 'question' is more a statement of how you view open access. If your question is, as in your title heading 'why open access matters' - then the answer, for me, is the potential for journal/article access to be 'green'. Many researchers and scholars, especially in developing countries, previously had very limited access to supportive material to direct and endorse their research. Open access has changed that landscape radically - which is why I am noting far more recently (and working with researchers originating from) published research emerging out of countries such as Iran. For this reason alone, I fully endorse open access as long as the intention and the publisher/journal structure is legitimate. Unfortunately, predatory journals have jumped on the open access bandwagon - but, in my mind, they are easily identifiable and avoided.
It makes less sense I agree, but there is always a commercial consideration; otherwise there is no incentive for publishers.
Dr Khalil, I am definitely "two-faced" about this issue. As a student, I can not afford to purchase every article that I think is productive to my term papers, never mind the ones that fascinate and feed my soul. As a hopefully future technical writer, I want to be paid for my intellectual property. As David states, the commercial considerations are real and also important because journals are used to raise funds as well as share information. Dean also makes an important point about copyright rights protecting information for being used improperly. He may have faith that predatory journals can be sussed out, I am not so optimistic. I think that educational institutions should get a some kind of reciprocity: get research give access to future research back to journal. There has to be some solution to allow poorer countries to have access to essential research.
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