Playing for Team Human today: Jason Schmitt. Jason looks at the big business of for-profit academic publishing in his new documentary Paywall:The Business of Scholarship. Should the the world’s research be locked behind closed doors? Jason makes the case for open access on today’s Team Human.
Jason Schmitt and Douglas Rushkoff discuss the way in which knowledge and scholarship has become locked behind paywalls. The irony of this is that so many of the articles and journals published are written by academics who get little gain out of the time and effort they put in. Schmitt and Rushkoff touch on the open-access work of Aaron Swartz and Alexandra Elbakyan. It is an interesting discussion in a world where many are arguing for more research, yet so much of this research is inaccessible. I remember Karl Trsek, my history teacher in high school, telling me that he continued to maintain a subscription with the university library. I did not understand why this was so important, but now more that ever this is the only means of gaining any sort of access.