Over the past two decades, the price of subscriptions to academic journals has increased tremendously, to the point where they’re often out of reach for students, even at the most well funded institutions. Many journals now cost in excess of $10,0 year, with a few peaking at over $25,000 per year, and your library can’t afford access to them all. For example, MIT has had to increase its journal budget by over 360% over 20 years to keep up with journal price increases, and the University of California-Berkeley has increased their journal expenditures by 1,300% over roughly the same period.

Many schools don’t have the financial resources to keep up, so they’re forced to make choices – choices that mean students lose access to core disciplinary journals and must base their education on what’s available rather than what they need. In 2010 alone, the University of Georgia cancelled subscriptions to nearly 600 journals. Unfortunately this seems to be the trend among colleges and universities rather than the exception.

The problem is much worse in the developing world where institutions can only afford a small fraction of the access they need, severely limiting both their students and their researchers. For example, a prominent researcher in India has said:

"Given such unequal access, Indian scientists inevitably struggle to perform world class science. The fact is that equitable access to current scientific information is essential if India is to take its rightful place in the world."