IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jinfst/v71y2020i12p1500-1504.html

Pirate open access as electronic civil disobedience: Is it ethical to breach the paywalls of monetized academic publishing?

Author

Listed:
  • Jack E. James

Abstract

Open access has long been an ideal of academic publishing. Yet, contrary to initial expectations, cost of access to published scientific knowledge increased following the advent of the Internet and electronic processing. An analysis of the ethicality of current arrangements in academic publishing shows that monetization and the sequestering of scientific knowledge behind paywalls breach the principle of fairness and damage public interest. Following decades of failed effort to redress the situation, there are ethical grounds for consumers of scientific knowledge to invoke the right of collective civil disobedience, including support for pirate open access. Could this be the best option available to consumers of scientific knowledge for removing paywalls to knowledge that rightly belongs in the public domain?

Suggested Citation

  • Jack E. James, 2020. "Pirate open access as electronic civil disobedience: Is it ethical to breach the paywalls of monetized academic publishing?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(12), pages 1500-1504, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:12:p:1500-1504
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24351
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24351
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.24351?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vincent Larivière & Stefanie Haustein & Philippe Mongeon, 2015. "The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-15, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yu Geng & Renmeng Cao & Xiaopu Han & Wencan Tian & Guangyao Zhang & Xianwen Wang, 2022. "Scientists are working overtime: when do scientists download scientific papers?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6413-6429, November.
    2. Kilian Buehling & Matthias Geissler & Dorothea Strecker, 2022. "Free access to scientific literature and its influence on the publishing activity in developing countries: The effect of Sci‐Hub in the field of mathematics," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(9), pages 1336-1355, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. F Bennaoui & Z Chabihi & N Elidrissi Slitine & FMR Maoulainine, 2024. "Introducing Electronic Health Records to Automate Medical Research," Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research, Biomedical Research Network+, LLC, vol. 55(4), pages 47146-47153, March.
    2. de Oliveira, Thaiane Moreira & de Albuquerque, Sofia & Toth, Janderson Pereira & Bello, Debora Zava, 2018. "International cooperation networks of the BRICS bloc," SocArXiv b6x43, Center for Open Science.
    3. Niels Taubert & Anne Hobert & Najko Jahn & Andre Bruns & Elham Iravani, 2023. "Understanding differences of the OA uptake within the German university landscape (2010–2020): part 1—journal-based OA," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3601-3625, June.
    4. Emilija Stojmenova Duh & Andrej Duh & Uroš Droftina & Tim Kos & Urban Duh & Tanja Simonič Korošak & Dean Korošak, 2019. "Publish-and-Flourish: Using Blockchain Platform to Enable Cooperative Scholarly Communication," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-15, May.
    5. Alex Huang, 2026. "Journal Impact Factor and Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: An Econometric Analysis Based on 1975-2026," Papers 2601.09618, arXiv.org.
    6. Chris H. J. Hartgerink & Marino Van Zelst, 2018. "“As-You-Go” Instead of “After-the-Fact”: A Network Approach to Scholarly Communication and Evaluation," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-10, April.
    7. Julián David Cortés-Sánchez, 2019. "Innovation in Latin America through the lens of bibliometrics: crammed and fading away," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 869-895, November.
    8. Jesse L. Reynolds & Edward A. Parson, 2020. "Nonstate governance of solar geoengineering research," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 323-342, May.
    9. You, Taekho & Park, Jinseo & Lee, June Young & Yun, Jinhyuk & Jung, Woo-Sung, 2022. "Disturbance of questionable publishing to academia," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    10. S. P. J. M. Horbach & W. Halffman, 2019. "The ability of different peer review procedures to flag problematic publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(1), pages 339-373, January.
    11. Siler, Kyle & Larivière, Vincent, 2022. "Who games metrics and rankings? Institutional niches and journal impact factor inflation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(10).
    12. Chris H. J. Hartgerink, 2016. "688,112 Statistical Results: Content Mining Psychology Articles for Statistical Test Results," Data, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-6, September.
    13. Mark Armstrong, 2021. "Plan S: An economist's perspective," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(8), pages 2017-2026, December.
    14. Stephan Puehringer & Johanna Rath & Teresa Griesebner, 2021. "The political economy of academic publishing: On the commodification of a public good," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-21, June.
    15. Fei Shu & Vincent Larivière, 2024. "The oligopoly of open access publishing," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(1), pages 519-536, January.
    16. Abena Dadze‐Arthur & Mary S. Mangai, 2024. "The journal and the quest for epistemic justice," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(4), pages 326-341, October.
    17. Morgan, Thomas J. H. & Smaldino, Paul E., 2024. "Author-Paid Publication Fees Corrupt Science and Should Be Abandoned," OSF Preprints 3ez9v, Center for Open Science.
    18. Reyner Pérez-Campdesuñer & Alexander Sánchez-Rodríguez & Rodobaldo Martínez-Vivar & Margarita De Miguel-Guzmán & Gelmar García-Vidal, 2025. "Beyond Quality: Predicting Citation Impact in Business Research Using Data Science," Publications, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-18, September.
    19. Yangping Zhou, 2021. "Self-citation and citation of top journal publishers and their interpretation in the journal-discipline context," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6013-6040, July.
    20. Morretta, Valentina & Vurchio, Davide & Carrazza, Stefano, 2022. "The socio-economic value of scientific publications: The case of Earth Observation satellites," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:12:p:1500-1504. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.