Guerilla Open Access

So a few years ago I watched the documentary The Internet’s Own Boy and afterwards, went and read the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto.

I thought it was amazing, the concept of hosting paywalled academic articles and scientific research, for anyone to download because that type of information should always be free. Aaron Schwartz failed, I believe, because he was the only person downloading and hosting the articles (a centralized approach).

Now, take SAFE and decentralization. If a network of clients could all be downloading articles and contributing to their being hosted on SAFE, something like this would become feasible and maybe even safe for activists to contribute to without the same repercussions. Is my thinking sound? Has anyone else thought about doing this? I think it could become one of the SAFE net’s big causes.

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Since we pay via taxes, for all academics writing articles on public time in public institutions, what these academic authors publish written during paid public time should be in the public domain, recorded in publically accessible distributed ledger technology for all to read and use, since they paid for it. Sadly this is not the case, and most abscond with what they have developed on public time to setup private businesses, which is in a word “theft” of tax payer money.

I have no beef if they are privately contracted and that work is kept private, where the work is created on their own time.

For sure public distributed ledger technology can stop this type of theft of tax payer money.

Yes Safe Network and Datachains can do what you are suggesting.

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So what I want SAFE to have is an app that explicitly enables this archive of academic information, but also indexes the authors and if possible, lists options for sending them donations. Up-end the terrible system where publishers take all the money without paying the authors, and instead allow readers who appreciate their work to show it. Kind of like Guerilla Open Access Patreon.

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Great idea, much needed, go for it!

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It’s well needed, hope you go for it!

To keep everyone updated on this, I’ve just been mulling it over trying to find the most efficient solution (in other words, the least amount of work and maintenance I’d need to put in). I’ve also been putting out feelers in the academic community for groups who are already working towards the same goals, because the last thing I want to do is duplicate effort or step in the way of people who know the problem better than I do.

I’m going to the Recurse Center for the summer, where I might be able to find good teammates for a project in this vein!

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