The open access movement never demanded to have free access of research by
means of breaching copyright laws, rather it acts as pressure group
focusing adaptation of release of research papers under open licenses,
however, some people term it as Guerilla Open access, which is not a right
term.
I have several other questions:
What are the reasons that most of the university presses and academic
learned societies either ceased publishing academic journals or
transferred the management to academic publishers?
Why still many authors(including developing countries) prefer to publish in
paywalled journals despite knowing that they will have to pay to access
there own content when they have options to publish in open access
journals?
Why the funding for higher education is decreasing every year in spite of
an increasing number of enrolments?
When public money can be spent on other futile reasons why not on access
to global research output?
Why successful national-level library consortium, such as UGC-INFONET was
halted that was providing legal access to scientific literature?
Why governments are not developing an equitable system that serves both
commercial publishers and access to academics and make these pirates of
no value?
On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 2:42 PM saleeq omar
The pathetic note by Vineet Kumar on the Sci-Hub is appalling. In countries where the scholarship is poorly funded or there are budgetary constraints every other day- to keep pace with the phenomenally expensive demands of the publishers, Sci-Hub free access, no matter the way it disseminates information, is perfectly reasonable. It is a step closer to the democratization of information; free access to publicly funded research. The advocates of open access who otherwise should have defended it are siding with the ones whose business is to trap knowledge behind paywalls. it deeply worries me about the future of research in countries like ours. The scholarship is being produced mainly by the universities and is given to third parties for free, and then pay that party to access our own research. There are these terrible problems that require an investigation, different perspectives to deal with them, but unfortunately, we have people who cluelessly are endorsing the monopoly. In our decadent library systems, that failed to give ubiquitous access to their ostensible subscribed resources during the pandemic, it was Sci-Hub, that provided free and uninterrupted access to everyone in their comfort zones. The only issue if there is any, is the issue of copyright, it is time for the policymakers to find alternative ways if they are unhappy with the Sci-Hub, rather than banning it for good.
Saleeq Omar -PhD.
-- Regards Vinit Kumar, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Library and Information Science Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Rae Bareilly Road, Lucknow 226025 +919454120174 https://sites.google.com/view/vinitkumar