From David Hill<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n Academic research is behind bars and\u00a0an online boycott<\/a> by 8,209 researchers (and counting) is seeking to set it free\u2026well, more free than it has been. The boycott targets\u00a0Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like\u00a0Cell<\/em> and\u00a0The Lancet<\/em>,\u00a0\u00a0for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was electrified by Elsevier\u2019s backing of a Congressional bill titled the\u00a0Research Works Act<\/a> (RWA). Though lesser known than\u00a0the other high-profile, privacy-related bills SOPA and PIPA, the act was slated to reverse the\u00a0Open Access Policy<\/a> enacted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 that granted the public free access to any article derived from NIH-funded research. Now, only a month after SOPA and PIPA were defeated thanks to the wave of online protests, the boycotting researchers can chalk up their first win:\u00a0Elsevier has withdrawn its support of the RWA<\/a>, although the company\u00a0downplayed<\/a> the role of the boycott in its decision,\u00a0and the\u00a0oversight committee killed it right away<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the fight for open access is just getting started.<\/p>\n Seem dramatic? Well, here\u2019s a little test. Go to any of the top academic journals in the world and try to read an article. The full article, mind you\u2026not just the abstract or the first few paragraphs. Hit a paywall? Try an article written 20 or 30 years ago in an obscure journal. Just look up something on PubMed then head to JSTOR where a vast archive of journals have been digitized for reference. Denied? Not interested in paying $40 to the publisher to rent the article for a few days or purchase it for hundreds of dollars either? You\u2019ve just logged one of the\u00a0over 150 million failed attempts\u00a0per year to\u00a0access an article on JSTOR<\/a>. Now consider the fact that the majority of scientific articles in the U.S., for example, has been funded by government-funded agencies, such as\u00a0the National Science Foundation, NIH, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, NASA, and so on. So while taxpayer money has fueled this research, publishers charge anyone who wants to actually see the results for themselves, including the authors of the articles.<\/p>\n Paying a high price for academic journals isn\u2019t anything new, but the events that unfolded surrounding the RWA was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back. It began last December when the RWA was\u00a0submitted to Congress. About a month later,\u00a0Timothy Gowers, a mathematics professor at Cambridge University,\u00a0posted<\/a> rather innocently to his primarily mathematics-interested audience his particular problems with Elsevier, citing exorbitant\u00a0prices\u00a0and forcing libraries to purchase journal bundles rather than individual titles. But clearly, it was\u00a0Elsevier\u2019s support of the RWA that was his call to action. Two days later, he launched the boycott of Elsevier at\u00a0thecostofknowledge.com<\/a>, calling upon his fellow academics to refuse to work with the publisher in any capacity.<\/p>\n Seemingly right out of Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s book\u00a0The Tipping Point<\/a><\/em>, researchers started taking a stand in droves. And the boycott of Elsevier continues on, though with\u00a0less gusto now that the RWA is dead<\/a>. It\u2019s important to point out though that the boycott is not aimed at forcing Elsevier to make the journals free, but protesting the way it does its business and the fact that it has\u00a0profits\u00a0four times larger than related publishers<\/a>. The\u00a0Statement of Purpose<\/a> for the protest indicates that the specific issues that researchers have with Elsevier varies, but \u201c\u2026what all the signatories do agree on is that Elsevier is an exemplar of everything that is wrong with the current system of commercial publication of mathematics journals.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that all forms of print media, including newspapers, magazines, and books, are in a crisis in the digital era (remember Borders closing?<\/a>). The modern accepted notion that information should be free has crippled publishers and many simply waited too long to evolve into new pay models. When academic journals went digital, they locked up access behind paywalls or tried to sell individual articles at\u00a0ridiculous\u00a0prices. Academic research is the definition of premium, timely content and prices reflected an incredibly small customer base (scientific researchers around the globe) who desperately needed the content as soon as humanly possible. Hence, prices were set high enough that libraries with budgets remained the primary customers, until of course library budgets got slashed, but academics vying for tenure, grants, relevance, or prestige continued to publish in these same journals. After all, where else could they turn\u2026that is, besides the\u00a0Public Library of Science (PLoS)<\/a> project?<\/p>\n In all fairness, some journals get it. The Open Directory maintains\u00a0a list of journals that switched<\/a> from paywalls to open access or are experimenting with alternative models. Odds are very high that this list will continue to grow, but how fast? And more importantly, will the Elsevier boycott empower researchers to get on-board the open access paradigm, even if it meant having to reestablish themselves in an entirely new ecosystem of journals?<\/p>\n