Open Science

One of the issues in science as it is practiced today is access to the results of scientific research. As with so much in the neoliberal economy, much scientific knowledge has been privatised as intellectual property and protected by copyright, not in the interest of the original author but to generate profits for the academic publishers. The most prestigious journals are owned by a small number of multinational corporate publishers, and academic libraries pay high subscription charges to give their institutional researchers access, while professional societies use their membership fees to support their own journals. In both cases, if you do not have access to an academic library or a society membership, you must pay a considerable sum, say $30-50, to read each paper. There is no time limit on this protection. As a retired scientist, I cannot read my own publications online, or even articles my grandfather wrote more than a hundred years ago, without paying separately for access to each one.

This raises the question of whether access to knowledge should be a human right. Should scientific knowledge be available only to the rich who can afford it? Knowledge is not something that is consumed when it is shared; on the contrary it becomes more valuable to society the more it is applied. Printed journals have costs to cover for paper, printing and delivery, but online costs are negligible. The founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh, said that "Knowledge is as wings to man's life, and a ladder for his ascent. Its acquisition is incumbent upon everyone." This would suggest that there should be no barrier in access to knowledge.

There is a growing movement to make the scientific literature "open source", that is available to anyone free of charge. The Frontiers Research Foundation is circulating an open letter calling for the world's science to be unlocked by making it open source. This can be accessed and signed at https://www.frontiersfoundation.org/open-science-charter. What is still missing in this initiative is to make scientific publishing accessible even to the poor in the global South, where there is much knowledge and experience from which the whole world could benefit, but without the means to make it available.

Ideally, scientific research should be a capacity open to everyone, and each local community should develop this at its own level. Sharing that wisdom and experience around the world will help to build an ever-advancing civilisation.