How many times have you been doing a literature search, found an article through searching on Google and then been frustrated that it costs 10, $20, or more dollars to gain access to an article? I find this too often to be the case. Why? It shouldn’t be that way. I think that scientific knowledge should be freely available but with copyright protections to benefit the author (not the publisher!).

Lawrence Lessig from Harvard recently gave a talk at CERN about this very issue. I think this should be required viewing for all in academia. Here’s the talk: