The Covid-19 crisis was, once more, an opportunity to call for freeing humanity’s knowledge (#freeaccesstoscience). Moreover, Sars-cov-2 is not the only danger requiring, at this time, free access to science. Although the approach can be appreciated, an inconsistency persists. Let us not expect lucrative publishers to freely give up charging for access to what was given to them. Let’s just stop feeding this mortifier system. Let us publish natively in Open Access, under copyleft, because we can. Pre-publication archive servers were put forward during this period. Let's move forward. Let's make Overlay Journals.
You could be more ambitious, launch open contribution and review journals, with original peer-reviewing and blinding mechanisms, with machine-readable content to increase the usability of your production. You could work with ethicists and epistemologists to refine your new publishing models. Yes, you could do all that.
Please, I'm not asking so much. But at least take the first step. A simple step. Quit all forms of contribution to the lucrative business scientific literature. Set up or contribute to free newspapers, under the 'diamond model', in copyleft.
You ! Researchers who find yourselves in favourable editorial positions! Take action! Decorated researchers, what are your medals worth if they are the flip side of such a confinement? Leave these lucrative newspapers publicly and loudly! Turn your editorial boards over to open, free operating models. Act now !
What comfort would be in sleeping, while knowing the enclosure you would be staking out. How could your peers, your families, your students, the citizens who support you, judge you favourably in light of the privatization of access to knowledge to which you would otherwise contribute without this action.
You, their colleagues, their students, their friends, their families, the taxpayers who pay their salaries and wages, demand this! Claim this ! Understand that each and every one of you who would fall for lack of knowledge is connected to this cause.
If you rightly judge that Knowledge is part of humanity’s salvation in the face of the perils that threaten it, the most rational action consists in not hindering it in its production, dissemination, reading or use.