My understanding is that the problem with making scientific journals freely available is usually one of reputation. Reputable journals need strong peer review a

My understanding is that the problem with making scientific journals freely available is usually one of reputation. Reputable journals need strong peer review and editing, which isn't always free. Further, until a journal is reputable, few people want to publish in it. In the US, all works funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) are required to be made freely available to the public within one (?) year of publication. Given, that's only valid for the field of medicine, but there's been a push for all academic work funded bu the government to get similar treatment. Extremely relevant - Ars Technica wrote an article on moving to open-access a few days ago. Open access is a movement in academia similar to open source in software, and is becoming more popular in fields like math and computer science. http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/11/the-economic-case-for-open-access-in-academic-publishing.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/11/the-economic-cas...