One reason to promote more open and universal access to academic materials is to allow journalists and interested laypeople to read the actual papers referenced in news articles and press releases, deciding for themselves whether the press release was accurate. The idea is that more exposure to how research actually works will improve general scientific literacy and put an end to the constant barrage of states wanting to outlaw the teaching of evolution or cosmology.
Having a few academics e-mail an author to ask for a copy might be acceptable. Having thousands of educated laypeople constantly e-mailing authors simply doesn't scale.
Another reason is to permit anyone and everyone to do wide-scale analytics, instead of having to rely on the analyses that big, well-connected entities decide to run.
Having a few academics e-mail an author to ask for a copy might be acceptable. Having thousands of educated laypeople constantly e-mailing authors simply doesn't scale.
Another reason is to permit anyone and everyone to do wide-scale analytics, instead of having to rely on the analyses that big, well-connected entities decide to run.