While there are plenty of problems with academic publishing, and the notion of making articles free and easily accessible is one I can certainly support, I do not see the rending such articles as free as a grand step in the general increase of knowledge as so many seem to think.
Making the articles available to all is not the same as educating all. You are only opening the gates to the niche crowd that already has some level of access to at least some of the articles via institutions. The level of background competence required to read academic work is what keeps the world ignorant and ensures the success and increasing erudition of the few. Unless you can devise a means of not only making academic material accessible but also eminently readable you are only, in mass archiving papers, preaching to the choir, so to speak.
You are making it easier for what is already a niche crowd to remain a niche crowd. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I'm not implying that this is something that shouldn't be done, nor am I saying it's not commendable to a degree, but I am suggesting the glorification that's heaped on this sort of thing, "free information from its chains—to give it to the masses free of charge." and "research Robin Hood" is a little gross when there are astounding issues with education at the ground level which prevent masses of people from getting into academic circles in the first place.
Furthermore, many people see: Big bad useless publisher. while that's true to some degree, far too many people ignore the complexities involved in publication proceeders. Sometimes careful and well-considered revision of existing systems is a better approach than outright anarchy and noble liberation of information.
When you dismantle one mechanism of publication you must implement another. The sheer volume of research that is published prevents any completely unguided system from being that effective. We could go back to old ways, wherein some journals were edited by an executive editor so to speak, but that doesn't seem so great either. Peer review has a lot of flaws, but to simply hope that publication will just work itself out when our current infrastructures are bypassed is far too naive in my view.
Even with peer review systems, gatekeeping, and money grubbing publishers academic dishonesty and turning over of papers, snuffing of other's works, and popularity contests all occur. Do we really expect such problems to disappear and not get potentially 10x worse in a completely open system? I'm not trying to advocate anything in particular here; not conservation of current, admittedly broken practice, nor radical upheaval and dissolution of all systematic forms of publishing. I am only trying to point out that publishing is a complex issue that is too frequently under-analyzed and, furthermore, it is assumed far too frequently that complete and unrestricted access to information, and complete freedom to publish anything whatsoever sans constricting publication or review procedure is automatically a good ting.
This argument doesn't make any sense. How is making publications that costs lots of money available to everyone "making it easier for what is already a niche crowd to remain a niche crowd"?
Your issue seems to be that there are problems with teaching people properly, but that's not making things worse for those who work outside academia - if anything, it's making it easier!
Making the articles available to all is not the same as educating all. You are only opening the gates to the niche crowd that already has some level of access to at least some of the articles via institutions. The level of background competence required to read academic work is what keeps the world ignorant and ensures the success and increasing erudition of the few. Unless you can devise a means of not only making academic material accessible but also eminently readable you are only, in mass archiving papers, preaching to the choir, so to speak.
You are making it easier for what is already a niche crowd to remain a niche crowd. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I'm not implying that this is something that shouldn't be done, nor am I saying it's not commendable to a degree, but I am suggesting the glorification that's heaped on this sort of thing, "free information from its chains—to give it to the masses free of charge." and "research Robin Hood" is a little gross when there are astounding issues with education at the ground level which prevent masses of people from getting into academic circles in the first place.
Furthermore, many people see: Big bad useless publisher. while that's true to some degree, far too many people ignore the complexities involved in publication proceeders. Sometimes careful and well-considered revision of existing systems is a better approach than outright anarchy and noble liberation of information.
When you dismantle one mechanism of publication you must implement another. The sheer volume of research that is published prevents any completely unguided system from being that effective. We could go back to old ways, wherein some journals were edited by an executive editor so to speak, but that doesn't seem so great either. Peer review has a lot of flaws, but to simply hope that publication will just work itself out when our current infrastructures are bypassed is far too naive in my view.
Even with peer review systems, gatekeeping, and money grubbing publishers academic dishonesty and turning over of papers, snuffing of other's works, and popularity contests all occur. Do we really expect such problems to disappear and not get potentially 10x worse in a completely open system? I'm not trying to advocate anything in particular here; not conservation of current, admittedly broken practice, nor radical upheaval and dissolution of all systematic forms of publishing. I am only trying to point out that publishing is a complex issue that is too frequently under-analyzed and, furthermore, it is assumed far too frequently that complete and unrestricted access to information, and complete freedom to publish anything whatsoever sans constricting publication or review procedure is automatically a good ting.