"A common problem for journalists, community organizations and researchers not associated with an academic institution" (which will shortly include me) is that "a significant portion of (research is) hidden from the public behind a paywall." Why is this? For funded research, "authors are required, in theory, to make articles open access within one year of publication. In practice, there is no way to verify this. There are no concrete penalties for Canadian scholars who fail to comply." And the rise of 'article processing fees' make it less attractive to publish as open access. "Multinational companies have appropriated the popular ideology of open access… in order to control academic publishing." All true. But the solution lies entirely in the hands of academics and their institutions, with no extra money required. Stop buying books and journals. Publish as open access institutionally. Allow the community to review and rank these (verified human-authored) publications for itself. All this would cost a fraction of what the current system costs. As a community, we don't have the money to throw away on this any more.
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