Should Knowledge Be Free? And why the F do we pay Elsevier (and of course other publishers!) so much money?

In my opinion, society benefits from openly accessible knowledge. If we oppose the monopolization of knowledge, we all benefit: It is certainly true that society benefits from openly accessible knowledge, as it allows for greater transparency, collaboration, and the sharing of ideas and insights. Monopolization of knowledge, on the other hand, can create barriers to access and hinder the free flow of information and ideas.

It is certainly true that publishers such as Elsevier can make significant profits from the publication of state-funded research, and there has been ongoing debate about the sustainability and fairness of this model. We argue that the current system disproportionately benefits publishers, while placing an undue burden in terms of access and costs on the humans and institutions actually handling the research workload. Elsevier and other publisher make a fuckton of money with state funded research and we have to bring them down in order to democratize knowleadge as it should be. Otherwise the only beneficial party of the current publishing scheme are the money making publishers, which provied only little added value to the research system.

But actual better listen to him: which explains it much better and more elaborate than I ever could: In the linked video , our fellow scolar Medlife Crisis takes a critical look at the current practice of scientific publishing: Thank you Medlife Crisis for this engaging input!

There are several ways in which the current practice of scientific publishing can be improved to increase the accessibility of knowledge and reduce the influence of monopolies:

Open access publishing: By making research articles openly available to the public, it is possible to increase the accessibility and visibility of scientific knowledge. This can be achieved through initiatives such as open access journals and repositories, which make research articles freely available online.

Preprint servers: Preprint servers allow researchers to share their work online before it has been peer-reviewed and published in a journal. This can help to speed up the dissemination of research findings and increase the transparency of the scientific process.

Fair and transparent policies: Publishers should adopt fair and transparent policies around access, pricing, and copyright, to ensure that research is available to as wide an audience as possible.

Alternative forms of publishing: Alternative forms of publishing, such as open notebooks and blogs, can provide additional ways for researchers to share their work and engage with the wider community.

By adopting these and other measures, it is possible to increase the accessibility of scientific knowledge and promote the free flow of ideas and insights within the research community and beyond.

Written in co-authorship with GPT-3