I was all set to make a grand post on reddit on why scientific research isn’t publicly accessible. Type type type, submit, “the link you are commenting on has been deleted.” Moderation, sometimes you suck. (I kid.) But it’s a shame to waste four perfectly good paragraphs, so here you go:

Why is scientific research hidden from the public by paywalls?

First, let’s be clear on one thing: the “public” that scientific research is hidden from is not nonscientists. So it’s not like scientists are involved in some conspiracy to keep their results out of public scrutiny. Paywalls — the restriction of having to pay a fee to read a scientific article — hide research from the “public” that is anyone who hasn’t paid to access it. That includes other scientists. Yes, any time you’ve wanted to read a paper and been blocked by a paywall, I guarantee that some scientist has already had the exact same experience and has been even more pissed off about it than you.

The reason we have paywalls at all is largely historical. In the olden days before the internet, scientific research was shared primarily through printed journals. Scientists would …