posted on 14/04/2012 22:00
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/09/frustrated-blogpost-boycott-scientific-journals →It began with a frustrated blogpost by a distinguished mathematician. Tim Gowers and his colleagues had been grumbling among themselves for several years about the rising costs of academic journals.
They, like many other academics, were upset that the work produced by their peers, and funded largely by taxpayers, sat behind the paywalls of private publishing houses that charged UK universities hundreds of millions of pounds a year for the privilege of access.