Finding a third way to open access - Copyright Clearance Center

"It is easy to set up straw men when it comes to open access (OA). On the one hand are those who believe all scholarly content should be free, with little regard for the value the publishing process adds. On the other are publishers, denounced as corporate entities prioritising the interests of shareholders at the expense of the research community. Dig a little deeper and these binary distinctions quickly start to break down. Where should a learned society that relies on subscription revenues to fulfil its charitable mission sit on the issue? Or how do we accommodate the fact that the biggest of those corporate entities, Elsevier, is also one of the world’s largest OA journal publishers? Spend time with those on the other side of the debate, and you tend to find they are just as passionate about helping researchers get published as you are. They just have different ideas on how to go about it."