Scholarly access is about education | Kaprifolia

"I read Mike Taylor’s post on how Sci-Hub is a ‘litmus test’ a few days ago. The post highlights some of the people who are sympathetic to Sci-Hub, as well as some of the people who are hostile towards the initiative. Reading the post, what stood out to me was the inanity of some of the hostile comments — some of them making the most bizarre claims. Among the more bizarre claims are the ones to the effect that keeping the scientific literature locked away is a good thing. Taylor quotes David Wojick who writes: 'I personally doubt that there are large numbers of people who (1) have the expert knowledge required to read and benefit from the scholarly literature but who (2) cannot find a way to access what they need. The arguments I have seen to this effect are completely unconvincing. […] This is one of the fundamental fallacies of OA, namely that non-experts should read journals. […] Only a few people can understand the typical journal article.' That’s a very elitist argument, and for two reasons. First, these blessed people Wojick speaks about who don’t have problems with access don’t exist. Anecdotally, but not irrelevant to the issue at hand, I’m currently doing a DPhil at the University of Oxford — supposedly one of the most prestigious universities in the UK. Yet, it is a regular occurrence that I find a paper that I think looks interesting from the abstract, but that I find, to my dismay, that I can’t access because the Bodleian Library doesn’t seem to have a subscription that covers that particular journal. If there is no freely available copy easily accessible via Google Scholar, then what is a poor, suddenly-not-so-privileged DPhil student to do? Second, to claim that it’s a 'fallacy' that non-experts would want to read scientific journals is beyond ignorant. Not only is that a moot point that does nothing to support Wojick’s argument — in no way should the lack of desire for access mean that access should be denied — it’s also making a very unpalatable claim, namely, that people who aren’t experts have no business reading the expert literature. That’s like saying that people who don’t have an education don’t deserve one. That is just silly ..."