Physicists change the publishing system

In the Jan. 30 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education there was an article about researchers and libraries are putting pressure on physics publishers to offer free online articles. The way it would work is that the libraries would all agree to pay fees to a non-profit organization, who would then give money to the physics journals, who would then provide their journals free online.

The publishers are understandably nervous about this, probably wondering what would happen if the libraries decide to pull out after a while. But it does sound nice from a user's and library point of view, especially given the high price of science journals!