The world’s leading cancer charity to stop funding open access publishing because of hybrid journals
As numerous posts on this blog have emphasised, the underlying idea of open access (OA) – allowing anyone to read and share published academic research for free –…
Walled Culture the book, three years on
Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) was launched just over three years ago. A few weeks afterwards, I talked with journalist and editor Maria Bustillos about…
Fans of open access, unite: you have nothing to lose but your chained libraries
When books were rare and extremely expensive, they were often chained to the bookcase to prevent people walking off with them, in what were known as “chained libraries”.…
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…
India spends $715 million on academic journals, but with the wrong kind of open access
Numerous articles here on Walled Culture have chronicled the struggles to turn the aspirations of open access to knowledge into reality. The central reason people do not have…
Where open access has failed to reform academic publishing, perhaps antitrust law will succeed
The open access movement has been trying for over 20 years to promote the widest access to knowledge. Sadly, as numerous Walled Culture posts have chronicled, what should…
Research suggests more open access training for academics could help boost its uptake and support
Open access publishing, which allows people to read academic papers without a subscription, seems such a good idea. It means that anyone, anywhere in the world, can read…
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…
How copyright makes the climate crisis worse
Many of the posts here on the Walled Culture blog examine fairly niche problems that copyright is causing. Although they are undoubtedly important, in the overall scheme of…
Taking open access to the next level, by giving control to researchers, instead of to academic publishers
Back in February 2022, Walled Culture wrote about diamond open access (OA), perhaps the “purest” form of open access publishing, since there are no charges for either the…
Publisher wants $2,500 to allow academics to post their own manuscript to their own repository
As a Walled Culture explained back in 2021, open access (OA) to published academic research comes in two main varieties. “Gold” open access papers are freely available to…
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…