from the publishers-mess-up-everything dept As numerous posts on this blog have emphasised, the underlying idea of  open access  (OA) – allowing anyone to read and share published academic research for free – is great in principle, but in practice has failed in important ways. That’s because traditional academic publishers have subverted the open access model to such an extent that the costs for research institutions of publishing in OA journals have barely changed at all. And yet one of the other key aims of open access was to save money while widening availability. Against that background, a natural question to ask is: if open access has failed to deliver savings, why bother supporting it?…