The Open Access Movement | ikangablog

"There’s so much good free stuff online (Khan Academy! Coursera! Caltech Authors!—the list goes on and on) that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, perhaps even jaded by it all.

But it’s inspiring how people use these resources. I open CUNY Academic Works and look at the map and see where the downloads are coming from—Nebraska, California, and Ohio in the U.S.; Brisbane, Australia; Airai, Palau; Akershus, Norway. People are looking at papers about Italian architecture, media representations of Asian-Americans, rhetoric and violence.

I look at stories people have shared about how they have used the open access publications. There’s a nurse in an Australian aboriginal community who entertained herself in her remote location by accessing scholarship about Cormac McCarthy. There’s a high school debater in the U.S. who does her research in institutional repositories because she cannot access scholarship behind a paywall. There’s a scientist in Mexico whose investigation in climate change is aided by research shared by other scientists and offered free of charge."