There are some things which are so self-evidently right and good that it's hard to imagine how anyone could disagree with you. The "open access" academic journal movement is one of those things. It is a no-brainer. Academic literature should be freely available: developing countries need access; part-time tinkering thinkers like you deserve full access; journalists and the public can benefit; and most importantly of all, you have already paid for much of this stuff with your taxes. They are important new ideas from humanity, and morally, you are entitled to them.

But with old school academic journals, unless you have an institutional subscription, you have to pay to read them. Here is a not-so-fun example: an article called "Impediments to promoting access to global knowledge in sub-Saharan Africa", about how difficult it is to get access to medical literature in developing countries, and how lack of access to knowledge represents a barrier to economic development and a further advantage for the rich west (http://qurl.com/7933p).

Get your credit card ready, this single study will cost you $25 (£13) plus tax to read.

Two online, open access publishing organisations have led the fight against the absurdity: one is Plos, from a Californian campaigning perspective, and the other is Biomed Central, run as a money-making empire (relax, there is nothing wrong with making money from publishing).

They both give readers access for free, but they have not had an easy time of it.

Firstly, they can't get journalists to directly link to their studies. I suspect newspapers like to fantasise that they are mediators between specialist tricky knowledge and the wider public, but I wouldn't be so flattering.

In fact, if you have access to the original journals, you can see just how rubbish things can get.

I couldn't write this column without my institutional login. Sometimes I have even had to go to the library to get information into my brain instead of using the internet.

But meanwhile, the old school, pay-for-access journals are so worried about open access that they've hired Eric Dezenhall, the famous American "pitbull of PR", and author of Nail 'Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses, to aggressively promote their interests, and undermine open access.

These closed journals are hardly the kind of people whose pockets you would want to line. Reed-Elsevier, for example, is one of the largest academic journal publishers in the world - they even own the Lancet - and they are the same company that runs the DSEI international arms fair in London, at which vile weapons are sold to murderous regimes for cash profit extracted from very real suffering and pain, in countries you will never visit on holiday.

These people do not deserve our charity, and I will be very pleased to see you outside DSEI later this year, 300th copper from the left: because when you are so wrong you need police, security, wire fences, and the pitbull of PR to defend you, then you know you're in trouble.



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