If Someone Hits A Paywall In The Forest, Does It Make A Sound?: The Open Access Button

In this guest post, David Carroll and Joseph McArthur, medical and pharmacology students at Queen’s University and University College London, respectively, describe their progress on the Open Access Button, a project they hope will help the push towards a more open scholarly publishing system.

We imagine everyone reading this has hit a paywall – elsewhere. Hitting a paywall is one of those things that is immediately followed by a groan, a tear, a stiff drink or less commonly, the temptation to physically harm your computer

Everyone has experienced it and each person hitting each paywall is an indictment of our current scholarly publishing system. The indictment is that of a broken system, where people are denied access to research they need, and ultimately paid for.