[542458]

That's a little elitist of you. There are lots of people outside academia who can understand and benefit from academic publications.

Consider, for example, somebody thinking of creating a startup doing research on what the bleeding edge of a field is. Or a former student considering re-entering academic research checking up on how the field has progressed since they left it. Or simply an independent researcher trying to understand if what they've created is novel and publishable.

[thr0waway1239]

Not to mention the many average Joes who have already done some important work by reading open access papers in fields simply because they suddenly find causes to became motivated to go past the average Joe level.

http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/

[thr0waway1239]

Actually I misunderstood how the author of that blog read the papers necessary to help his son (I read the story a while back).

Here is another link from his blog: http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/

And under the section called "A regret: Not pushing for open-access" he says:

"My hope is that tenure will provide me opportunities to steadily shift computer science and medicine toward high-quality, high-impact open access venues.

The reason I feel especially ashamed over my behavior is that in the course of my research for my son, I have used my privilege as an academic to punch through paywalls with impunity to reach medical papers.

In a damning irony, even this paper is behind a paywall.

I realize that few patients or parents have the ability to do what I did, and they never will, until all of academic medicine goes open access.

In computer science, academic paywalls stifle.

In medicine, academic paywalls kill."

I suppose the main point still stands.

[kahrkunne]

I'm saying average. I wouldn't pay for biology studies because I don't understand them, so I don't see why an accountant should be paying for CS studies he doesn't understand. I'm just trying to warn about having taxpayers pay for things that realistically 95% of them are never gonna use.

[noobiemcfoob]

That's a fair point, but it doesn't invalidate the parent's point. Ultimately, there will be far more laypeople who cannot understand the articles than budding, academically inclined entrepreneurs.