There continues to be much confusion about the merits of Open Access journals. For readers, there is no doubt they are welcome. Print journals in many libraries are costly and in some cases the costs are passed on to the reader. So I was interested to find an article in The Scientist about a new pilot program where the library actually pays for readers costs. Here is the introduction to that paper:

If a researcher does not have an individual or institutional subscription to a journal, she can easily pay as much as $35 to access a single article. But such pay walls for scientific articles may soon be a thing of the past for users of the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriot Library. The library, together with Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the tech startup Labtiva, recently initiated a pilot program that allows readers to access individual articles from NPG journals, even if the Marriot Library doesn’t subscribe to the journal in question. Rather than the user paying out-of-pocket, the university foots the bill—for a reduced rate. University librarians hope the new program will help expand user access to research articles while helping keep subscription costs down.

Blog readers may wish to visit The Scientist to read Pay-per-Article and Save

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32681/title/Pay-per-Article%20and%20Save