Open Access Controversy

An Affordable Academic Future

Due to the widespread use of the internet, many resources have become accessible to the public at cheaper and cheaper costs. Music, news, clothing, and more have become very affordable for the average consumer. Despite this modern trend, academic research remains expensive-- too expensive-- for the common person to access. Now more than ever, amidst the pandemic of COVID-19, the financial barrier to academic research is intruding upon people’s right to be informed and educated. Moving forward, academic research should be made affordable to maintain its commercial value and to encourage universal education.

Because accessing academic research is not always financially feasible, people have found ways to counter the standard methods of obtaining access to it. For example, to protest expensive journal subscriptions, websites, like SciHub, offer academic research articles for free (Murphy, 2016). The hefty price of subscriptions establishes that these articles have high value in the world; however, if sites like SciHub continue to provide open access, people will begin to trade their expensive subscriptions for the cheaper, illegal alternatives. When people use subscriptions, journal publishers have the ability to organize and highlight the best articles. But with pirating, academic research becomes less and less refined. That is, the standard for what qualifies as academic research and what research is published will greatly decline. While free access provides more information to the public, the information is less organized and lacks proper editing.

Though academic research should not be free, the current pricing is not justifiable either. Many people believe in a price heuristic: the higher the price of a product, the better quality of that product. Unfortunately this belief is not enough to condone pricing so high that even large institutions, such as Harvard, struggle to pay up (Murphy, 2016). Besides, there are plenty of industries that have already experienced fault in this heuristic with the rise of the internet; the academic research industry cannot turn a blind eye to this trend. Brain Feldman from New York Magazine exposes a comparable dilemma between pirating and publisher profits occurring in the movie and video-streaming industry. The most important takeaway from his summary of this dilemma is that “piracy declined [when] the legal options for consuming media became easier than the illegal options” (Feldman, 2019). To apply this to academic research, if journal publishers make their subscriptions services affordable, people will pay for the convenience of organized and edited papers instead of using their own time to sift through open access hubs for the best works. In short, to maintain the value and credibility of academic research, publishers need to make accessing research more affordable.

Another issue with having a financial barrier to academic research is that it drives inequality in education. As the publisher behind SciHub, Alexandra Elbakyan, would describe it, “paywalls inhibit the free flow of information, they prevent humanity from being fully “conscious” (Murphy, 2016). People who have a lower financial income today could be just as intelligent and innovative with access to modern academic research as those who can currently afford it. However, the longer this barrier to academic research stands, people in lower income situations fall further and further behind on the most recent information. How can individuals become educated, if they only have access to partial information? On a grand scale, this gap could prohibit 3rd-world countries from developing into 1st world countries. Dr. Eisen, “a professor of genetics, genomics and development at the University of California, Berkeley”, exposes ignorance in the academic research industry by noting that “‘the real people to blame are the leaders of the scientific community — Nobel scientists, heads of institutions, the presidents of universities — who are in a position to change things but have never faced up to this problem in part because they are beneficiaries of the system’” (Murphy, 2016). Due to scientists, heads of institutions, and presidents of universities being in the privileged class of this situation (possessing access to academic research), they might not realize the gap in education they are forming by publishing their works under journals with pricey subscriptions. While journal publishers are responsible for the high subscription costs, scientists choose to publish their works in these journals for the sake of recognition. To avoid driving a gap in education, publishers and scientists should work together to make sure that academic research is affordable.

It will take many individuals and institutions to achieve affordable academic research, but modest pricing is definitely the right direction for the academic research industry moving forward. Affordability will maintain the value and credibility of research by funding the organization and editing of articles that free alternatives cannot. Affordability will also provide more people with access to the education they deserve. People will always look for cheaper alternatives, but publishers and scientists have the responsibility and power to reduce the amount of illegal access to academic research moving forward.