Here’s another important reason why academics should publish in open access titles: self interest
Open access has been discussed many times here on Walled Culture. There are several strands to its story. It’s about allowing the public to access research they have…
Mass resignation by top academics over “too greedy” publisher, as Council of the EU calls for open access
It’s no secret that academic publishers are making fabulous profits by exploiting the work provided free of charge by researchers and funded by taxpayers. This is still happening,…
No big deal: calling the publishers’ bluff on high-price access to publicly-funded research
This blog has written a number of posts about open access, and its difficulties. One important impetus for the move towards open access was the increasing use by…
What Professor Litman’s classic open access book “Digital Copyright” teaches us
The central theme of Walled Culture the blog and the book (free digital versions available for download) is how copyright is a bad fit for the digital world.…
Interview | Glyn Moody: Walled Culture – A Journey Behind the Copyright Bricks
Glyn Moody has been writing about copyright, digital rights, and the Internet for 30 years. He is the editor of the Walled Culture project and author of Walled…
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…
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…
Will analogue academic textbooks be the next to move to the Spotify digital licensing model?
Last December, a post noted that Spotify is a rising digital giant, despite its lack of profitability. As well as representing a concentration of power – something seen…
ResearchEquals: step-by-step academic publishing, where the default is openness and CC0
There are a number of problems with academic publishing, which open access has been trying to fix for over two decades. Back in 2020, a “Manifesto to Liberate…
Remembering Aaron Swartz, who died on this day, a victim of the copyright system
On this day in 2013, Aaron Swartz died by his own hand, at the age of 26. His short but full life as a hacker and activist is…
Why environmental non-governmental organizations – and everyone else – should go green (open access)
Open access (OA) – making academic research freely available to all – seems self-evidently a great idea. It’s good for the public, which gains access to work it…
Rights retention: one small step for academics, one giant leap for global access to knowledge
A few weeks ago, we wondered whether academic publishers might try to shut down the amazing General Index of scientific journals that Carl Malamud has created. There’s a…
Interview | Mirela Roncevic: Open Access, Open Science, Scholarly Monographs, E-Book Lending
Scholar, writer, editor, content developer, and publishing and library consultant, Mirela Roncevic talks about the long journey of open access and open science, how to pay for scholarly…
Breaking down the walls: UK government supporting open science and open research
It’s not just culture that suffers because of walls built by copyright: science, too, has a terrible problem in this regard. In some ways, that’s even worse, since…