Jean-Claude Guédon made the following observation in The Humanist mailing list with regards to open access matters;
Researchers may be very busy, but they still need to pay attention to their working environment. Scientists should pay attention to the quality of their instruments, and they generally do; humanists are certainly interested in the wealth and depth of their library, which is an infrastructure, and if they complain about the lack of journals, etc., they might consider looking a little further than the usual complaint to the librarian who, too often, is simply deemed to be either insensitive or incompetent, or both, plus being bureaucratic, etc… If journals are missing in the library, a quick check on library budgets and their evolution might be profitably compared to the evolution of subscription prices for journals, particularly STM journals. They might then consider that, given the priorities of modern universities, humanities journals will be given up in order to free money for STM journals. Then, humanists might begin to wonder why some commercial publishers need to make profit at the tune of 35-45% before taxes.
Researchers are not just researchers; they are also citizens. Public money goes into supporting research, lots of it. Why the published results of research should be so expensive when the manuscripts have been given away to publishers for free, when publishers have us peer review the articles again for free, etc. ? These are the very questions that triggered the Public Library of Science when it was still nothing more than a worldwide petition back in 2001. They are still with us. They may trouble the quiet aire of delightful studies, but that is an elitist attitude that seems to claim that some of us are entitled to unlimited (subsidized) access to information without having to reflect on the economic conditions that begin to make this privilege a reality.
Exactly. When humanists turn their back on the world, they shouldn’t be surprised when the world turns its back on them. I worry that it may be too late to halt this particular swing of the pendulum from arcing, depressingly, further out.
What we should be doing is campaigning for our libraries.