Expensive Journal Subscriptions Must Pave Way Towards Open Access Information

In order to do some research for this article, I went to JSTOR and searched, ‘‘the high cost of scholarly journals.” On the side of the page was written, “Your access to JSTOR provided by Bowdoin College.” 

“Awesome,” I thought to myself. And that is about all that I thought about when I saw it, because, as with all privilege, it meant that I didn’t have to think about what that disclaimer meant.

It meant that if Bowdoin College did not pay for my access, I would have to find some other way to read journals featuring top-tier academic and scientific research.

Over the last few decades, the cost of subscriptions to academic journals, particularly scientific ones, has been rapidly increasing. In order to stock certain high-end journals, libraries have to pay ever-increasing amounts of money to publishing companies.