The war to free science | Vox

Probably not a great week for the PR departments at Elsevier and Springer Nature

"Imagine your tax dollars have gone to build a new road in your neighborhood.

Now imagine that the company overseeing the road work charged its workers a fee rather than paying them a salary.

The overseers in charge of making sure the road was up to standard also weren’t paid. And if you, the taxpayer, want to access the road today, you need to buy a seven-figure annual subscription or pay high fees for one-off trips.

We’re not talking about roads — this is the state of scientific research, and how it’s distributed today through academic publishing."

The war to free science | Vox