This is an intelligent and very well informed discussion of the history of open access (dating to the 1800s, when 'open acess' referred to the freedom to browse the stacks in a library) and some of the points of discussion pro and con, especially from the perspective of the humanities. Though the author doesn't take a point of view, this article offers probably the best argument against open access I've seen: "the reason why open access is being pushed forward is primarily to serve the interests of the economy, and not for the benefit of the public good... this is problematic because this process takes place in a context of commercial enclosure. Scientific literature and data ought to be given out for free, while knowledge produced under patents, or subject to commercial exploitation, is exempt from the requirements of open science... that open access is undermining the value of intellectual labour and dispossessing academics of their work."
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