Viral Open Access in Times of Global Pandemic · punctum books
flavoursofopenscience's bookmarks 2020-03-19
Summary:
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As with the temporary opening of access to COVID-19-related articles, the academic presses offering “discretionary” unpaywalling – to a random subset of their catalogs with unknown or poorly argued relevance for the catastrophe that has hit our education systems – are doing nothing but engaging in last-minute, haphazard PR, hoping that the realization that publicly funded knowledge is inaccessible to most of us will not dawn too soon on the anxious tax payer, confronted with their restless child at home or scrambling to assemble an impromptu online “learning experience.”
It is not only in times of crisis that publicly available knowledge can save lives. It always has this potential, and it’s our choice.