Letter: Open Access Would Cut Costs At Colorado University

Just last week, the University of Colorado-Boulder proudly announced its fifth Nobel Laureate, and the NSF awarded the university a $1.4 million grant for research in climate change. As a flagship university often at the center of local and national debate, CU is a world-class institution that aims to prepare its students and support its faculty in relevant, cutting-edge research. However, under the strain of exorbitant academic journal subscription costs, our university is at times unable to provide students and faculty with access to the research articles they need. According to acquisitions department in the University Libraries, in 2012 alone, the university spent $7.7 million on journal subscriptions, exhausting nearly 77 percent of the Libraries' total materials budget. How is a state university like CU-Boulder supposed to provide the research resources its students need without breaking the bank?

Open Access (OA) is free, immediate, online access to research articles with full reuse rights and is an alternative to the traditional closed, subscription-access system of scholarly communication. It makes the results of scholarly research available online for free, upon publication, and removes barriers for scholarly and educational use...