How AI could bring about the mass adoption of open access in mathematics – and beyond
Numerous posts on Walled Culture have lamented the continuing failure to realise all the benefits from open access. Even when there is a move to open access, it…
Trump’s war on knowledge requires re-inventing academic publishing as diamond open access
A year ago, Walled Culture wrote about a growing risk that we will lose access to the world’s knowledge, because of a failure by traditional academic publishers to…
Publisher’s cost cutting, including the botched use of AI, pushes editors of top journal to resign
Walled Culture has noted previously the fabulous levels of profit that many academic publishers have achieved, largely through the abuse of copyright, as explained in Walled Culture the…
We risk losing access to the world’s academic knowledge, and copyright makes things worse
The shift from analogue to digital has had a massive impact on most aspects of life. One area where that shift has the potential for huge benefits is…
Another reason why diamond open access is best: no economic barriers to publishing rebuttals
Walled Culture has written numerous posts about the promise and problems of open access. An important editorial in the journal Web Ecology raises an issue for open access…
No good deed goes unpunished in a world where the rules have been set by academic publishers
One of the heroes of my new book Walled Culture is Paul Ginsparg. In 1991, Ginsparg set up an automated email server while he was a staff member…
Open access is taking over, but academic institutions are paying as much money as ever: what happened?
The good news is that open access publishing, which allows anyone to read academic papers without needing a subscription, is taking over. The bad news is that academic…
The mighty Elsevier academic octopus adds another tentacle
Last year, Walled Culture noted that the academic publisher Elsevier enjoys an astonishing profit margin of 30-40%. Those profits, built on the free labour of academics writing about…
Interview | Jean-Sébastien Caux: Rethinking Academic Publishing, Open Access & SciPost
Jean-Sébastien Caux is Professor in theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of Amsterdam. A Canadian citizen, he obtained his PhD in Oxford, was postdoctoral Fellow in All…
From paywalled academic publishing towards free, fast and frictionless sharing of knowledge
As a post back in November explained, copyright is key to the business model of academic publishing. By pushing researchers to assign their copyright to publishers, the latter…