Committee and the Executive Committee of the Latin American Studies Association, I am pleased to announce that, beginning with this issue, anyone residing in Latin America or the Caribbean will be able to access all current and past LARR issues free of charge through the LASA and LARR Web site. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first among our peer journals to offer this service. The impetus behind this initiative, which was developed in close collaboration with LASA Executive Director

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... lagros Pereyra-Rojas and the open-access consultant Enrique Mu, came from the 2009 LASA Congress in Rio de Janeiro. The LARR-sponsored panel"Publishing Your Research" generated a lively discussion of the value of open-access publications to promoting the free exchange of knowledge. This is particularly true for Latin America and the Caribbean, given the scarcity of resources there. For example, subsequent research showed that only 4 percent of universities in Latin America and the Caribbean had access to all LARR issues through their institutional membership to LASA. This very small percentage is complemented by the access that 2.4 percent of these institutions had to back issues of LARR through Project MUSE and the lZ7 percent that offered their students and faculty the opportunity to purchase individual articles from back issues through their participation in JSTOR. In addition, of course, the slightly more than two thousand LASA members who resided in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2009 also enjoyed access to LARR. Nevertheless, it is clear that the vast majority of scholars in Latin America and the Caribbean simply are excluded from using the important research published in LARR. The ideal solution to this problem would be open access for all, allowing any interested person, anywhere in the world, the opportunity to download articles of interest free of charge. The problem, however, is cost: who will pay? Although LARR is in a unique situation compared with similar journals-as it is the flagship journal of LASA and individual and institutional LASA memberships pay for most of its subscriptions-