On 1 July 2013, the British Academy published a fascinating collection of essays on ‘Debating open access’ (the book itself is, of course, freely available to download). The volume is a laudable attempt to address a variety of opinions and perspectives. As Chris Wickham and Nigel Vincent note in their introduction:
‘We decided at an early stage when thinking about putting these papers together, in January 2013, that we needed to have as contributors people who thought open access was a good thing, the way forward; people who thought it was a good thing but fraught with practical problems which were ill-understood by some of its advocates; and people who thought it was a bad thing in principle’.
Whether you are new to open access, or already well versed in the arguments pro and con, this is a valuable contribution to the literature.