The Guardian reports on how a Cambridge mathematician’s protest led to demands for open access to scientific knowledge. The article includes input from numerous academics and publishers, and summarises the current state of scholarly communication.

  Expensive paywalls not only waste university funds, but slow down future scientific discovery and put up barriers for those who need access to primary research in order to exercise their democratic rights.

What would it take to disrupt the academic environment? This opinion piece in Medium.com guides us through the business practices of academic publishers and how, despite the advent of the digital evolution, traditional publishers have thrived. 

  These are companies who buy companies to decrease the cost and increase the profits and sell them again in two years. This is to whom we scholars are voluntarily handing our work. Are you going to trust them? These are people who are in business to make the most profit.

Mathew Ingram discusses why academic publishing is the market that digital disruption forgot.

  Academic publishing is an odd system — the authors are not paid for their writing, nor are the peer reviewers (they’re just more unpaid academics). And yet scientific publications are some of the most outrageously expensive pieces of literature you can buy…. As far as I can tell, the money paid for access today serves little significant purpose except to perpetuate dead business models.