Yesterday, The Chronicle looked into Columbia University Press’s decision to switch Gutenberg-e, the landmark digital-history monograph series it publishes in cooperation with the American Historical Association, to an open-access model. The monographs will also be available, along with related scholarly material, to subscribers of the ACLS’s Humanities E-Book project.

Over at her HASTAC blog, Cat in the Stack, Duke University’s Cathy Davidson describes Gutenberg-e’s shift to open access as “a cautionary and a celebratory tale”—and reminds readers that by now we should have learned that digital publishing comes with a price tag:

If the Gutenberg-e project is considered as an experiment in a new mode of publishing, it’s a success. But let’s not forget all the trumpeting about how cheap and easy online publishing would be, how it would “solve the crisis in scholarly publishing.” Not. Ironically, the failure of Gutenberg-e’s economic sustainability is what is allowing it to go open access.

Meanwhile, Barbara Fister over at ACRLog doesn’t love the dual OA/subscription model:

I’m growing a little weary of libraries paying for special versions while the great unwashed who aren’t affiliated with an institution that can afford it are stuck with a free budget version. Why the duplication of effort? We’re deliberately creating our own digital divide. But that’s the subject of another post.