The access principle: the case for open access to research and scholarship

There was a time, not so long ago, when the release of a scholarly book’s paperback edition constituted what might be called its greater “public ” release. Certainly, the dustjacketed hardback copy would have appeared earlier, but only in the rarified public space of a scholarly bookstore. Research libraries, too, would trot out the hardback editions, lining them up, jacket-less, on the New Book cart. But for students and the educated public the paperback is the underline-and-annotate edition of choice. May the names of those paperback imprints always burn bright across the bookshelves of this life – Vintage Books, Penguin and Pelican, Dover, Dell, Signet, and Harper Torchlight. They made this body of ideas truly public, reaching small-town bookstores – in my case at the back of Edward’s Paint and Wallpaper – as well as big city franchises. The paperback was the open access educational reference point for my generation, in what Kenneth C. Davis memorably called “two-bit culture: the paperbacking of America ” in his book by that name (Davis, 1984). So my tenuous education, no less than the commitment to this bookish life, was built, paperback by paperback, shelf by shelf. The paperback edition of The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to