These subscription are a common point of friction at universities. The administration obviously wants to minimise spending, while the research staff will forcef

These subscription are a common point of friction at universities. The administration obviously wants to minimise spending, while the research staff will forcefully insist that they absolutely must have access to The Kazakh Journal of the History of Native Antarctic Languages Monthly. And they're probably right! If, however there's this shiny new repository where everyone can get the articles for free, that may encourage _some_ researchers to stay home instead of attending that dreadful budget meeting. Or at least not be quite as forceful in their demands. So I'd say this works pretty much the same as it does for other digital content, only that publishers will not see their revenue decrease gradually, but rather with a certain delay, but drastically. The subscription contracts usually covering multiple years probably adds to that, as well. Of course the large journals will see the effects last. It really makes for an awkward conversation when that Elsevier guy asks "So at the Max Planck society, with 30,000 Phds, nobody reads Nature?".