Augustana Observer

Augustana Observer

Augustana Observer

Inaccessible academia: a knowledge crisis

Inaccessible+academia%3A+a+knowledge+crisis

Databases are filled with a multitude of academic research and journals. These resources should be accessible to the general public as an owed right.

For starters, it is important to acknowledge that accessibility to academic sources for college students is relatively not as difficult as it is for non-students. For instance, Augie students have access to a plethora of academic research through the college library, I-Share and databases covered within their tuition costs. However, the majority of the general public does not attend college and can’t access these resources as easily as college students can.

According to Statistica, only about 20 million students in the U.S. attend college at a time. For most, once a student graduates from college, their “free” access to academia is stripped. Since students no longer pay tuition after graduating, they would need to pay ridiculous amounts of money to access these sources.

Specifically, Vox reported that big publishers like Elsevier charge academics thousands of dollars to make their research open access. This means that even if an academic wants to publish their findings for others to view for free, they’d have to take on the financial burden instead.

Not only that, but colleges have to spend millions of dollars a year to make academia accessible for their students.

Even prestigious institutions like Harvard can’t afford for their students to access all research and journals available.

Essentially, both academics and the public alike are cheated by publishing companies. This holds especially true since most academic research is funded through our tax dollars, according to Berkeley. No matter what, these publishers expect someone to pay to access academic sources, whether that be the student or researcher themselves.

It’s disgusting that we somehow have allowed publishing companies to leech and profit off of the works of academics and to force the public to pay for research that was funded through tax dollars to begin with. These greedy publishers wouldn’t even have the ability to profit off of research if it weren’t for the public’s funds.

In other words, the U.S. taxpayers subsidize academia, yet they are also forced to pay boatloads of money in order to access it.

This conundrum isn’t even a new concept: there have been activists who have spoken on the inaccessibility of academia. Particularly, a woman named Alexandra Elbakyn needed access to free articles in order to finish her neuroscience research. As a result, Elbakyn took back what was rightfully hers by creating a website filled with pirated academic sources called Sci-Hub. However, she got sued for millions of dollars for creating this free hub, according to The Guardian.

The fact that Elbakyn got sued for providing a public good is unreasonable, especially since Sci-Hub still has a limited selection of sources.

It is also important to note that with the price of education growing ridiculously fast, college has become increasingly more unattainable for those born into poverty. The very least these affected communities could have is accessibility to knowledge from academic research, but gatekeepers simply don’t allow them.

College should not be the only gateway into access to this knowledge. With how high tuition prices are, hoarding these resources from poor people and restricting access to college students for only four years is absurd.

What even is the point of spending all this time and money for academic research if it is only accessible to a small portion of people?

Graphic by Alyssa Duckett/Observer Staff

View Comments (1)
More to Discover

Comments (1)

All Augustana Observer Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • A

    AlexMar 6, 2020 at 5:55 pm

    Your article is misleading and lacks basic research on the issue. It would impossible for anyone institution to purchase access to every peer-review journal in every industry. There are ways of accessing this information after college but it does require some work n the part of the student seeking the information. For example, you can travel to the University of Iowa law library or medical library and access their database as well as having access to the journals and/or case studies within the library. They also have library exchange programs (as does your public library) to obtain access to necessary literature. I understand that actually traveling to a library seems foreign to a segment of our society, that being the younger generation who is used to having information at their fingertips but if the information is that important to access it should be worth your time end energy to travel to the institution that offers you what you need or desire. As journalists, you should appreciate the concept of wanting to be paid for your time and energy that you put into your articles and materials you produce. Once you enter the real world you will expect your paycheck to reflect your time, energy and resources you used to obtain a story. When it comes to peer review journals there is more than time and energy that goes into those articles. There is a substantial cost. It is the cost you are purchasing.

    Reply
Activate Search
Inaccessible academia: a knowledge crisis