The Size of the Open Access Market

Usually discussion of open access has a utopian cast. It begins with the benefits to researchers and rapidly moves on from there-because it is a foundational premise that what is good for the research community is good for everybody. Expanded access will serve to cure horrible diseases, the science behind new technologies will cool a warming planet, and insights into people and power will make a veritable Woodstock out of the Middle East. Resistance, as the Borg say, is futile, but also immoral: Who, after all, wants to stand between a parent and an afflicted child?