A brief rant on open source academic papers

by kevindoranlaw

I am not an unreasonable person and I am well aware of the pressures in the publishing industry, specifically in academic publishing. However, as I am not affiliated with a university or research institute, I find myself in a very difficult situation. When I read a law journal article or other scholarly work, I generally like to find the works cited by the author in order to go more deeply into specific topics highlighted by the article. This is, I believe, a common practice.

However, I am all too frequently met with paywalls. Many academic publishers charge from $25 to $40 per article to download a pdf. When one article can cite dozens of articles, this can mean that if I wanted to read all of the cited works, I would have to pay hundreds of dollars.

This barrier to independent scholars, if I can include myself in that group, does a great disservice by limiting the number of people who can engage in scholarly debate. If I cannot read all of the works which are relevant to a topic, I cannot comment on it with any authority. Therefore I am precluded from participation in the academic conversation. Whether the academic community is harmed by my absence is, perhaps, debatable, but surely there are voices who would be well heard who are unable to engage because of these paywalls.

There are movements in some quarters, Germany for example, to open source scholarly work. The notion is, the greater number of people with access to and engaging in scholarly debate, the better the conclusions and insights that will result. This seems to me to be a good idea.