Dear Pieter, How I wish it were true that
> ... the > core (biomedical) literature gets subscribed to (or licensed) by practically > all > academic libraries, [and therefore] access is for free for most academic end > users. Unless you define this "core biomedical literature' very narrowly indeed, and "all academnic libraries" even more narrowly, it is very far from being true. Just to limit ourselves to major ARL research universities, there are 135 biomedical journals with an impact factor of 1.0 or higher that are subscribed to by neither Princeton nor CalTech; 55 of them have an impact factor of 2.0 or higher. This is not an exact list--it was prepared 2 yrs. ago and there have undoubtedly been a number of cancellations at each institution since then; there are on the other hand 14 titles (4 in the top part) that have since been acquired by Princeton in blanket plans, but otherwise hadn't be received. The reader can imagine what the situation is at undergraduate colleges.
