As has been pointed out here and other places, the page fees for open access journals is a barrier for many researchers. It is however in the long-term economic best interest of home institutions for some of these researchers to foot this bill since it reduces costs overall. That is a difficult sell as well since these libraries are cutting staff as well as book orders. Paying page costs this year will not reduce the costs of subscriptions for a long time. As long as researchers publish in and read the expensive journals the libraries will be pressured to subscribe to those journals.
Bryan Heidorn, School of Information Resources and Library Science, University of Arizona
