The legacy publishers are not shy of promoting “their” latest articles under the #openaccess twitter tag. Here’s todays from Elsevier. You might think that when an author had paid APCs to publish an article as “Open Access” you’d be allowed to use it for teaching 50 students. But no. I asked for permission – as an academic – to re-use 3 pictures from this article for teaching. And I am to be charged 82 dollars for

Let’s review …

Bowen and colleagues do some research.

They draw the diagrams to support the research

They PAY Elsevier so the whole world can read this

And Elsevier still refuse to allow this to be used for teaching without additional payment.

So what happens?

Either the lecturers break the law and show the pictures to the students. Or they refuse to show the pictures, which is bad education and bad science and immoral.

And no-one except me and a few others get angry. Because after all it’s only taxpayers’ money we are spending anyway.