Why Is It So Expensive to Read Academic Research?

The aphorism “information wants to be free,” coined by entrepreneur Stewart Brand in 1984 at the inaugural Hackers Conference, has come to serve as a shorthand justification for an ideology that would remove all unjust barriers to information access. And information has rarely been more accessible than it is on the controversial website Sci-Hub, which offers completely free access to pretty much any academic journal article ever published. The site does this through what is commonly termed “content piracy” and has been in the news lately because academic publishers are trying very hard to shut the website down. Continue reading at 'Slate'

[ Slate | 2016-04-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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