Pirate open access as electronic civil disobedience: Is it ethical to breach the paywalls of monetized academic publishing?

Abstract

Open access has long been an ideal of academic publishing. Yet, contrary to initial expectations, cost of access to published scientific knowledge increased following the advent of the Internet and electronic processing. An analysis of the ethicality of current arrangements in academic publishing shows that monetization and the sequestering of scientific knowledge behind paywalls breach the principle of fairness and damage public interest. Following decades of failed effort to redress the situation, there are ethical grounds for consumers of scientific knowledge to invoke the right of collective civil disobedience, including support for pirate open access. Could this be the best option available to consumers of scientific knowledge for removing paywalls to knowledge that rightly belongs in the public domain?

Free access to scientific literature and its influence on the publishing activity in developing countries: The effect of Sci‐Hub in the field of mathematics

“…Moreover, financial resources are needed to access the latest research, and a lack of funding constitutes a common bottleneck for developing countries (Adcock & Fottrell, 2008; Arunachalam, 2003; Boudry et al, 2019; Gordon, 1979; Tennant et al, 2016). In sum, insufficient access is likely to be one of developing countries' major obstacles to conducting impactful research in the first place (Arunachalam, 2003; Gordon, 1979; James, 2020).…”

“…Journal subscription fees are costly, so that even renowned institutions, such as the University of California or the German Max Planck Society, are canceling and renegotiating subscription deals with major publishers 5 . Although the acceptance of huge investments in journal subscriptions is dwindling, publishing authors may be actively or involuntarily discriminated against by their peers if they cannot access state‐of‐the‐art research publications in a specific field or journal when trying to publish their own research findings (Gordon, 1979; James, 2020). Even worse, their research endeavors may be outdated without them even being aware of it.…”

“…This closed access model has been criticized because it may give rise to club good situations (excludability in access to a good, which is non‐rivalrous in consumption). These are likely to favor certain organizations that have the resources to pay for access (James, 2020), although theory usually conceives of academic knowledge as a public good (Stiglitz, 1999). This situation may distort research agendas, create regional or global lock‐ins in research trajectories, or lead to an inefficient allocation of resources.…”

Analysis of requests for journals <i>Nature Food</i> and <i>npj Science of Food</i> by the data of the SCI-HUB service for the first half of 2020

“…Sci-Hub is a popular Internet service, which provides an access to scientific information. Despite the fact that this service positions itself as a "pirate", it is popular among scientific community [1]. The founder of Sci-Hub is Aleksandra Elbakyan [2].…”

“…From the moment the service was launched and up to now, the audience of Sci-Hub has been constantly growing and a significant percent of users is from the developed countries [1]. With that, Sci-Hub goes beyond distribution of only licensed content but distributes scientific literature without consideration for authors' rights, including scientific publications with open access.…”