he should talk to unglue.it; this is their business - RepoRat

problem, tho, is that jrnl publishers expect rents indefinitely from their backfile; that's baked into their business model. - RepoRat

I doubt this will work across the board, but it might work for *some* journals and *some* publishers. That would be a step forward. I suspect that the gummint is eventually going to have to exercise a kind of intellectual eminent domain to solve the back-catalogue problem. The issue for publishers is, the longer they hold out, the lower "fair market value" will be... - Bill Hooker

As many libraries have physical access to many journals pre-internet (either paper or digital or both), I don't think this is as big a deal as one may initially fear. Methinks it's going to be hard to argue that something which has been available for decades for anybody who can walk into a library, should require more than maybe a token payment to put online. With OA gaining traction and following, the pressures will be just too high,especially once many funders have adopted OA mandates. - Björn Brembs