The quality of science is not strained

Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber illuminates another reason to support open access of scientific journals:

[O]pen access could, at least in the long run, contribute to closing the global inequalities in access to education. And it can also help to improve the quality of the papers being produced by scholars living and working in the South, which in turn increases their chance of being published in what we consider quality journals, which would be good not just for their careers, but also for global dialogues.

Pretend you’re a scientist in a developing country. You’re doing experiments in a lab where the electricity goes out regularly, you’re trying to stay up-to-date with other scientists’ work but you can’t afford to subscribe to the journals, and when you submit your own articles you don’t get published because your write-up doesn’t sound the right flavor of “professional.”

Open access wouldn’t solve all of your problems, but it would certainly help. Not to mention helping the rest of us, who need science to move forward based on everybody’s best thinking, not just the folks with lots of money.

With liberty and open access for all

Have you ever heard of open access? It means “even people who aren’t in college should be able to read the results of our country’s best researchers and thinkers.” Well, not literally. But that’s the general idea.

Think about the parents of a child with a rare disease, who want to read the latest medical journal articles. Or a small-town journalist struggling to understand the implications of a local enviornmental problem. Or even an amateur enthusiast who wants to see the research published by this year’s Nobel prize winners.

If you’re not a college student or professor, you’re largely left out in the cold when it comes to vast amounts of useful information (much of which we as taxpayers have helped to fund). For example, my own alma mater will not allow alumni to purchase access to their library databases for any price. (For $200/year, you can sit in the library and look at a printed book, but millions of journal articles and other electronic resources are forbidden.)

Even if you are in college, costs can be an issue. I remember being shocked that a “bulkpack” of readings for one of my classes cost $70 — and that was years ago. For students who are on scholarship and/or working their way through school, expensive coursebooks and readings are a significant barrier to getting the class materials they need, promptly and effectively.

The good news is that some passionate and visionary people have been working to change the current, locked-down system. Go read one of them now.