Who gets to publish?
The first time I heard about the idea of 'open access' (OA) publications was in 2004. I was a post-doctoral scholar and had gone to a research conference. This was a time when university libraries and large labs would get hard copies of journals, and PDFs of published papers were not nearly as common as they are now. At the conference that I went to, I was inspired by the idea of having unfettered access to knowledge, research and discovery, regardless of one's financial ability. I was sold on the idea that someone in Boston, Bogota or Bahawalpur could read a paper, whether or not that person was affiliated with a rich institution.
Some twenty years later, that promise has not lived up to its promise. In fact, it has increased inequity between the rich and the poor institutions, the haves and the have-nots. Open access publications - which have become quite common in my discipline and many others - rely on the researchers having to pay 'article processing charges' or APC to the........
© The Express Tribune
