Anti-Open-Access-Polemik aus der Zeppelin-Universität – Archivalia

From Google's English:  "The cultural theorist [Jan Söffner] from Friedrichshafen analyses undesirable developments in the area of ​​scientific publication, such as the “expensive pricing policy of publishers”, but comes to the conclusion that open access is not the right way. However, I was unable to understand his following sentence: “Behind the slogans of open science and open access lies (anyone who thinks of Orwell is a scoundrel) a closure of academia upon itself”....

[Quoting the Söffner:] "The real currency on the public market is the time invested in reading: anyone who really wants to spend two hours of their life on an idea is usually willing to spend money on it - conversely, free offers alone rarely lead to people investing their time in them, especially if readers do not know that the offer exists or at least cannot find it."

This argument, coming from the armchair of the educated middle class, seems very out of date. Equal opportunities in science can only be achieved with open access. Scientists have to look through a large number of publications that, under current market conditions, they can only obtain from libraries or other sources. Söffner's dream at the end of an apparently paid new digital platform, a kind of club for good scientific books, is completely unrealistic."