Knowledge production doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Every great scientific breakthrough is built on prior work, and an ongoing exchange with peers in the field. That’s why we need to address the threat of major publishers and platforms having an improper influence on how scientific knowledge is accessed—or outright suppressed. Infrastructure we rely on must be built in the open and on interoperable standards, and hostile to corporate (or governmental) takeovers. Universities and the science community are well situated to lead this fight.

In the digital age, the collaborative and often community-governed effort of scholarly research has gone global and unlocked unprecedented potential to improve our understanding and quality of life. That is, if we let it. Publishers continue to monopolize access to life-saving research and increase the burden on researchers through article processing charges and a pyramid of volunteer labor. This exploitation makes a mockery of open inquiry and the denial of access as a serious human rights issue.

…

When infrastructure is too centralized, gatekeepers gain new powers to capture, enshittify, and censor. The result is a system that becomes less useful, less stable, and with more costs put on access. Science thrives on sharing and access equity, and its future depends on a global and democratic revolt against predatory centralized platforms.