Now is as good a time as any to put in my $0.02 worth on the scientific publishing industry. As someone who has needed to access journals while being inside the great academic library firewall, and outside of it, I have a well developed appreciation of the difference between the haves and the have-nots. As is obvious to anyone who has used the internet lately, the traditional business model of scientific journal publishers is functionally obsolete, since the most important value proposition – physically applying ink to paper and putting a postage stamp on the final product – is now an optional luxury that most readers could easily live without. Read the rest of this entry »