There is a deep irony in the public funding of science. Billions are spent by governments to fund research in science and medicine. This research is done by scientists, many of whom are employed by government, through research institutes and universities. The results of this research are published in journals. However, even though the research is paid for the public, the public cannot freely access it. But its all done on public money.
Indeed, it strikes me as profoundly weird when I read a news article about some great new research finding but I can't simply click on a link and see the raw article.
Moreover, the scientists themselves can't freely access it. Even though the scientists did the research, they must pay the owners of these journals to publish the articles. Before that happens, the editors of the journals ask other scientists to peer-review the article, which is also done for free. When the article is accepted, to see the finished article, even if it's just a PDF, the author of the article has to pay for a subscription to the journal. It's essentially a billion dollar gravy train for the handful of scientific publishing conglomerates out there, Reed-Elsevier, Springer, Wiley and Macmillian.
There is something broken about this system.
Nevertheless, the open-access revolution has happened slowly as these pioneers had to fumble around looking for a workable payment system. And for many years, open-access has been considered fringe, and did not appear to be able to threaten the big science journals such as Nature, Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Courtesy: Bosco