Open Access; Not a Fallacy, But a Tenet of Academic Freedom | By Any Other Nerd

"The following is a response to an article, The Fallacy of Open Access, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed from last month. Suarez and McGlynn gloomily warn at the end of their essay, The Fallacy of Open Access, that “open access is not the solution to all problems in academic publishing.” Their suggestions to place their faith in scholarly societies is problematic when so much of academic publishing (including the platforms that scholarly societies often use) are overwhelming owned by for-profit industries feels quaint. Given that over 50% of academic publications are published by for-profit companies and that number has continued to grow according to Larivière, Haustein, & Mongeon (2015). Dewatripont, Ginsburgh, Legros, and Walckiers (2007) also pointed out the correlation between the increasingly for-profit academic publishing industry and the drastic increase in costs to access to research. As for asking for financial compensation from publishers for scholarly work, such an idea will problematize scholars’ work along academic freedom by breaking down the idea of freely pursuing knowledge or trying to make a quick buck. This solution is also likely to encourage institutions to pay scholars less since a core part of their pay is the production of research."