Publishing consultant Joe Esposito has written a though-provoking and interesting article, Open Access 2.0, addressing scholarly publishing economics and the relationship to open access. Esposito's thoughts on open access and new publishing efforts are wrapped around economic theory and how it helps us to understand and predict the successes and failures of publishing.

The basis of Esposito’s argument is that the publishing economy’s limited resource is not access, but attention, and that the role of traditional publishing is to help readers decide what is worth their time reading. He then goes on to discuss this traditional role and the importance of the attention economy in the world of digital scholarship and publishing. His article is noteworthy for its successful focus on economic theory in addressing complex issues of scholarly communication, but more so for its understanding that academic publishing does not need to be viewed in simple open or closed terms. While he addresses the potential impact of some forms of open access (notably self-archiving) in simplistic and relatively biased terms - he accurately asserts that in the modern scholarly landscape, there is a need for a plurality of publishing markets for reaching a plurality of reader communities - including innovative open access efforts that can advance scholarship, promote effective models, and increase impact.