Seen in the Creative Commons feed, an article in the British Medical Journal by John Wilbanks, executive director of the Science Commons, on why scientific research needs to be Open Access (and his arguments apply to all academic research, of course):
Summary points
Authors should be prioritising open access to their works—for the good of other scientists and to ensure that the full benefits of the internet and advanced technology may be realised
Open access is rapidly becoming a mainstream idea in scholarly publishing, with more than 2000 open access journals and more than a million author self archived open access papers
Legal and technical barriers to open access are easily overcome using freely available tools
Full article at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1306
