I mention that because the presumption that David seems to make in this post is that somewhere, deep in our souls, there resides the altruistic desire to make information available for use by others in as reasonable a fashion as possible. Perhaps he’s espousing the moral ground that one should not be publishing for the sake of (gasp) making money.

I don’t want to say that this desire should not be out there, but one point of copyright is to guarantee the copyright holder the opportunity to profit from his or her work. That said, and as I said at the beginning of this, I was surprised by the inexpensive nature of law reviews – that is until I learned that they are published (by and large) by the law schools, and edited by students, in part for the academic achievement and prestige that students gain by being on Law Review.

Not so with other disciplines where journals may be commercially published at a very expensive cost. In many disciplines, publishing in peer reviewed journals, and the popular journals of one’s field are very important. Most of these journals are available electronically, as are most law reviews, and so while access to the content may be fairly easy, it still comes at a price. Libraries and other subscribers pay a considerable amount for services that make journals available electronically, and I doubt that the commercial publishers would willingly forego these revenue sources for the altruistic desire.

So what of Open Access? There is certainly a trend toward open access, and perhaps authors who are less concerned about the profit motives than are publishers, may find open access desirable, but I doubt that the commercial publishers will latch onto this with much gusto, as their motives are driven, at least in part, by profit.

But then again, what do I know? Maybe the altruistic desire is alive and strong.