Linux.com

Well, open access doesn't really have much to do with keeping data proprietary or making it easily available. Technically, all data generated by publicly funded, and a good deal of privately funded research are available on demand. That's part of the scientific peer review process. Industry data are more difficult to access for obvious reasons, but reasonable demands can still be made when the public interest is involved, and the results have been published in a peer reviewed journal. Open access is instead concerned with making the publications resulting from research freely (as in beer) available. Journal publishers of course do not want this to happen, since they make their money off their publications. And there's nothing wrong with that from one point of view: anyone has access if they pay. The problem is that journal costs continue to accelerate, and many academic institutions are heavily burdened by attempting to keep up with the costs. So in this way, public access is limited. And I should make clear here that the major part of the public of interest is not any Joe-schmo who wishes to access and analyze data that they are not familiar with, but scientists and other researchers who need to have access to published results. A fair and reasonable compromise would be to keep the journals closed for some time after publication and then release them for free (again as in beer). We reasonably cannot expect private publishing houses to print for free; they would rapidly go bankrupt. But, the papers must be made available without burdening both public and private institutions.

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