Getting what you’ve already paid for
I think this is one of the most common-sense arguments for open publishing: State and federal tax dollars pay for education and research resources. Schools and students are then forced to pay again to use the material. If our society has already paid for something, shouldn’t we be allowed to see it without paying again?
PAID Rubber Stamp by Enokson is licensed CC BY-NC 2.0
Here’s an excerpt from a longer essay into this issue. I think it makes some good arguments, and is worth reading in full.
[W]hen you buy something, you should actually get the thing you paid for. Imagine paying in advance for a week’s vacation in a cabin by a beautiful lake, only to be charged a second time when you arrive and check in. You would never stand for such a thing, because everyone understands that when you buy one, you should get one.
State and federal governments frequently fund the development of education and research resources through grants made by the National Science Foundation, the Departments of Labor, Education, Energy, and other entities. Through these grants, state or federal governments commission the creation of these resources using taxpayer dollars. In other words, when the National Science Foundation gives a grant to a university to produce a pre-engineering curriculum, you and I have already paid for it. However, it is almost always the case that these products are commercialized in such a way that access is restricted to those who are willing to pay for them a second time. Why should we be required to pay a second time for the thing we’ve already paid for? Or worse—if every school district in your state pays to license the curriculum, you’ve now paid for it 250 times….
Because the bulk of education and research funding comes from taxpayer dollars, it is essential that OER and open access have open policies. As governments move to require open policies, hundreds of billions of dollars of educational and research resources will be freely and legally available to the public that paid for them. Every taxpayer has a reasonable expectation of access to educational materials and research products whose creation tax dollars supported.
References
Wiley, D. and Green, C. (2012) ‘Why openness in education?’
This argument is also presented in Veletsianos, G., and Kimmons, R. (2012) ‘Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship’