Open Access: Is it open season on traditional scientific publishing?

A debate on the prices of Elsevier journals and why thousands of academics have pledged to boycott them... What is the cost of knowledge? That’s the question asked by thousands of academics (thecostofknowledge.com) who have pledged to boycott Elsevier journals in a stand against ‘exorbitantly high prices’. They want science to be open access: if science is funded by the public, it should be freely available to the public. No more frustrating links to a $30 PDF? Great! But don’t publishers provide a service? The Editor in Chief of Nature thinks the shift is ‘inevitable’. Is he right? And who will pick up the tab?  Come and join us for lunch at 12pm on 25^th May when Alice Bell (Imperial College) will be talking about the practicalities, the potential and the pitfalls...”