Thanks for drawing my attention to this interesting paper, Marc. I think it
clearly shows that universities have often held back from claiming rights
over academic writings based on pragmatic reflections - (universities tend
to be averse to litigation, especially against their own faculty
From Physics World (January issue, p.8, not yet online)
Some 5K papers a year in particle physics will become immediately free to read
online ...
SCOAP3 will be using 'library' funds to the tune of $1800/article for Phys.
Lett. B and 1200 GBP/article for New J. Phys. ...
If my math is
One can indeed argue that SCOAP3 was unnecessary because a majority of the
papers in the scope of SCOAP3 would be available via arXiv. But let¹s not
forget that this wasn¹t a valid argument for most libraries to cancel
their subscriptions to these journal before SCOAP3. So if libraries
