When you think about ownership, or what it means to own something, what comes to mind? To me, owning something means I spent money to acquire this object; now it is mine. Some might agree with me, and some might not, but this topic seems more in the news than ever. Many examples exist, like online platforms saying that just because you buy/download a piece of media doesn’t mean you have the right to remove it. This has been an ongoing debate topic about owning digital movies and video games. Especially as digital content becomes more preferred than physical media. In our context, the question pertains to copyright and who maintains ownership and control over information and sources, as well as the data we interact with as researchers.

I can only speak for myself in this rant, but I find it frustrating to run into paywalls and other financial or copyright barriers that keep you from accessing a source or piece of data. Maybe you find a source in a database, but when you try to access it, it takes you to another database that actually owns it, and you can’t get in, or they require you to physically go to view the source or ILL it, which can take time. How do we deal with these situations, and is there an easier way to open up control and usage of data without?

The topic of piracy and open source came up in class on Monday, and I think most of the class supported projects that use open source or allow access to information without interference or walls. As the video we watched, Open Access Explained! (1), pointed out, one reason open source formats rose was the increase in scientific journal prices in response to digitization. The video mentions how Journal prices have outpaced inflation by almost 250%. One Journal even costs $40,000 a year for an institution to have a one-year subscription. The idea of research is to make the world a better place and further our understanding of it, right? How can young, emerging researchers like us continue this mission if institutions want to lock information behind walls? To me, the answer is the same as it is for most things that keep me up at night… Capitalism. It would be interesting to see how less capitalist countries control access to their scientific and academic research. I need to find a Chinese student and ask whether they ever run into paywalls for academic journals and databases, or if they can access them. I understand that researchers and scholars don’t want someone else to claim their data as their own. I like to believe most scholars aren’t just stealing from everyone else, but at the same time, we are not talking about watching a Disney movie we did not pay for (Disney, I regret nothing). It’s frustrating to see so much control and regulation on something that makes it harder to use data than it is to help further research. It will be a sad day when I graduate and no longer have access to the library’s resources… 

Open Source everything, free the information, Viva la revolucion!

1. Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen, “Open Access Explained!” June 2015