Great layman’s terms Open Access explanation

Open Access: Promises and Challenges of Scholarship in the Digital Age

Leslie Chan from University of Toronto Scarborough has a nice just-long-enough primer on Open Access and the current challenges of academic publishing. This is the article I’d send to my aunts, uncles, and neighbors to try and get them to understand the issue– it starts with a nice big lists of the questions OA can help us look at in new ways, like:

Why is Google Scholar showing that your colleagues’ articles are cited more than yours?
What could universities do to give the public a better understanding of their mission?
Should funding agencies require that publications resulting from their support be made publicly available?

via Open Access News