I have good friends who are connected to this in a personal way, which makes it difficult to really get into the issues publicly. I think they’re really, really important, though, and smart people saying stupid things really pisses me off, so I’ll just say this:
Yes, there are for-profit journals (mostly in the sciences). And that’s probably an issue we – the scientific community, the larger academic community, the general public – should tackle together. But JSTOR, Project MUSE, and other databases of peer-reviewed journals are by and large non-profit organizations established by academic institutions and libraries precisely for the purpose of making available the best and widest-ranging research, more easily and more coherently, to more people. The discussion does not benefit from lumping organizations like JSTOR in with for-profit publishing enterprises like Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell.
For what it’s worth: “teachers, schoolchildren, university students, and brilliant autodidacts everywhere” ARE able to access the best research at public libraries.
thinking about tv 