Good to see The New York Times covering the open access movement. Dr. Miguel Nicolelis's quote in the article summarizes why open access is important beyond just a scholarly publishing crisis:

"Usually you want to publish your best work in well-established journals to have the widest possible penetration," Dr. Nicolelis said. "My idea was the opposite. We need to open up the dissemination of scientific results."

This agrees with my perspective, and one that we should not lose sight of: it's about using Internet technology and open content licensing to maximize the dissemination and use of academic knowledge. Even without the problems for libraries being created by the commercial publishing industries, open access is still a worthy cause.