Currently in the process of extending the literature review for my thesis. After intensive trawling through Google Scholar, I’ve found about 60 papers I’m trying to download into drop box for easy day-to-day reading on my iPad. Turns out that, even with my University of Warwick log in, I can only access about 50% of them. Is it just me or is this utterly ludicrous? Given the ease with which academics can now connect, communicate and share with each other, what role do commercial publishers actually serve?

Edit to add: the percentage of these inaccessible articles which have social media buttons attached to the abstracts wonderfully illustrates everything that’s jarring and anachronistic about intellectual products being given for free by authors subsequently being placed behind a paywall.