A long standing source of frustration in the research community has been the locking of research papers behind paywalls. It’s easy to see how detrimental this is to the scientific research enterprise. After all, the purpose of publishing papers is to share the research results among the greater scientific community.
For all of my adult life—and probably longer, maybe even forever—the research behind these papers have been paid for by the government. In modern times, that means you and me. So here’s the consequence: we pay for the research but can’t read the results of that research unless we want to pay substantial fees to the publishers of the associated papers.
You can easily see the problem from the publishers point of view. It’s an existential threat. If the papers were made available without charge, why would anyone (or more specifically, any institution) pay thousands of dollars a year for access to the journals? The journals argue that they do provide added value. They perform curation, editing, and perhaps most importantly, peer revue of the papers.
But here’s the thing. Except for some in-house copy editors, they don’t pay anything for those efforts. They’re all considered necessary public service on the part of academics. So all of that “added value” can be and is provided for open access, on-line journals. Really, the only reason that paid, dead tree journals continue to exist is academic tradition. The journals have always played a huge role in tenure and promotion decisions in academia and many can’t imagine any other way of doing business.
Regardless, for research funded by the US National Institutes of Health, at least, the journal monopoly is coming to an end. Effective July 1, 2025, the results of all NIH supported research will be available without charge. This is a slight acceleration of the previous policy that required public availability by December 31, 2025, but it serves as notice that this long standing rip off of the public will no longer be tolerated.
Of course, research not funded by the government—if there is any—is not affected but it’s hard to imagine there’s enough of it to make it worthwhile to keep charging for it. Maybe the journals will find a way to reconfigure their business model or maybe they’ll simply go out of business. Either way, we’ll be better off. These days, it’s easy to publish on line and for those who want curated papers, there are already open access sites providing that service.