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I'm surprised and relieved to see this coming from an Ivy. Huge kudos for moving science forward while leaving the money leeches behind.


It is Cornell. They run arXiv and host its primary mirror.


Indeed. From the university behind arXiv, this is less of a surprise. Having said that, however, it is obviously a big step and should be applauded by the scientific community at large.


Point.


Only "an Ivy" or similar has the buying power and (more importantly) social capital for such a move. (E.g., consider how the elite social network lights up if a particular journal of note insists that therefore they won't sell to Cornell.)


At the same time, the top-50 (or -whatever) institutions have the least incentive to rock the boat: they're usually rolling in "buying power" :) and their faculty are relatively likely to be among the winners of the game as it's currently set up (negative-sum game though it is). I think it's safe to say that if the top 50 were sufficiently motivated to make closed-access journals go away they would already be gone by now.




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