Liberate academic research from paywalls

Academic publishing is one of the most profitable industries in the world. Academic publishing is lucrative because of its unique business model. A traditional publisher covers expensive costs. It pays writers for articles. It employs editors to shape and check the articles. It pays to distribute the products to subscribers and retailers. However, academic publishing costs publishers less. Researchers give their articles to academic publishers for free. Leading scholars volunteer to judge whether the articles are worth publishing. The publishers then sell the product back to university libraries and public-funded institutions. Many researchers criticized this business model. Researchers should resist this unfair business model because it keeps raising unreasonable subscription fees, uses a sales strategy that wastes universities’ money, and exerts bad influence over researches. Universities and institutions should build open-access systems themselves instead of merely boycotting the publishers because (1) boycotting cannot effectively force publishers to change; (2) open access helps researchers find, retrieve, and use the research they need; (3) publishers charge authors expensive fees on open access; (4) scientists already have sufficient tools to build open-access systems themselves.