10 Reasons Why We Need to Smash Paywalls Now

Paywalls are frustrating. We’ve all been locked out of research, whether we’re writing a paper or researching the disease of a loved one. Our request system asks authors to share their work with researchers, journalists, students, and the curious. We’ve received almost ten thousand requests for paywalled research. Here are ten stories about why we need to smash paywalls now:

• A parent: “My son is a schizophrenic — I would like to read this article [but] am blocked because I don’t subscribe to the journal.”
• A researcher was doing background work for a proposal on teaching data skills to undergraduate students in life-science courses: “It’s not available through university library and I cannot justify going through the burden of interlibrary lending for every potentially interesting paper.”
• A patient wanted to read a study of the use of insulin pump therapy and other therapies for Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). The study explores lower rates of use in children of ethnic minority status. The requester said: “I have been living with T1D myself for more than 31 years now, and I am a curious human. Not to mention that it could foster advocacy efforts.”
• “I don’t have access to SAGE journals — I’m an artist and an independent researcher. I need to have this article for research I’m doing around cybernetics and wellness.”
• “I work with a maternal & child health group in a resource poor setting in India. It looks like this consensus article is relevant to our work but I can’t access it to see what it is recommending we do.”
• A scholar: “Trying to see how my paper was cited.”
• A trainer in further education needs to keep up to date: “I was trying to learn more about retention in higher education.”
• “Attempting to read information about bisexual relations as a bisexual. I’m curious to know what others like myself have found out about themselves.”
• A researcher reasons: “You would think that an article published by the Harvard Law Review, titled ‘Toward a Model of Roles in the Due Process of Life and Law’ from 1973, cited over 700 times, is something society would want in the public domain.”
• A medical professional wanted access to an article in Cell: “It is extremely interesting research results for general public health that should be shared! As a clinical nutritionist I find these findings exciting! It’s a pity I have to pay $31.50USD to read it!”

Use your voice and request paywalled research you need at openaccessbutton.org. Visit our request page to read more stories and support other requests to help smash paywalls.