“As for the articles themselves, Suber is a witty, intelligent, and compelling advocate for OA. In the first sections, Suber lays a foundation explaining OA and its emergence as a response to the serials pricing crisis and the development of the web. Across multiple articles, Suber lays out his strongest arguments for knowledge as a public good and for OA specifically, describes and refutes the opposing arguments, creates the vocabulary that distinguishes between flavors of OA, and presents evidence that OA can and will work.

Moving from the early overview chapters, Suber explores some practical applications that are useful for librarians looking to learn more about how OA can be implemented. One of the interesting concepts that he explores is “flipping a journal” (150), a process by which a journal could become OA by replacing the subscription fees imposed on readers with publication fees imposed on accepted authors. The model is not perfect, and Suber devotes considerable space to envisioning the realistic obstacles that would be faced in practice, but he ultimately views the process as a win-win that would allow publishers to explore OA without much risk. Elsewhere, Suber discusses scenarios for creating OA digitization projects, establishing OA for electronic theses and dissertations, and setting an OA policy for a funding agency or university. Suber’s advocacy is pragmatic throughout, arguing that different forms of OA are suited to different contexts and that, although some forms are more ideal than others, it is important to recognize all progress and not let the perfect become the enemy of the good….”

“This compelling blend of theory, policy, and practice is also on display in Suber’s fascinating new book, Knowledge Unbound: Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002-2011, published last year by MIT Press. Anyone with an interest in the rich history and evolving landscape of academic publishing should take note of Suber’s work. Director of both the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Harvard Open Access Project, Senior Researcher at SPARC and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Suber became a leader in the open access movement during its pivotal decade, a period traced in this collection of forty-four essays….

For Suber, asking vital questions about the future of scholarly publishing naturally requires a critical stance toward “the assumption that the interests of the research community should be subordinated to the business interests of publishers” (p. 21). With forceful clarity, Suber guides the reader away from bended-knee paeans to a tiresome red herring, encouraging serious reflection about what scholarly publishing ought to accomplish in the first place….”