George Monbiot, The Guardian; Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research – it should be free
"Never underestimate the power of one determined person. What Carole Cadwalladr has done to Facebook and big data, and Edward Snowden has done to the state security complex, the young Kazakhstani scientist Alexandra Elbakyan has done to the multibillion-dollar industry that traps knowledge behind paywalls. Sci-Hub,
her pirate web scraper service, has done more than any government to
tackle one of the biggest rip-offs of the modern era: the capture of
publicly funded research that should belong to us all. Everyone should
be free to learn; knowledge should be disseminated as widely as
possible. No one would publicly disagree with these sentiments. Yet
governments and universities have allowed the big academic publishers to
deny these rights. Academic publishing might sound like an obscure and
fusty affair, but it uses one of the most ruthless and profitable business models of any industry."
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