Half of All Research Papers Published In 2011 Already Free To Read

ananyo writes "Search the Internet for any research article published in 2011, and you have a 50-50 chance of downloading it for free. This claim — made in a report produced for the European Commission — suggests that many more research papers are openly available online than was previously thought. Previous best estimates for the proportion of papers free online run at around 30%. Peter Suber, director of the Office for Scholarly Communication at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says the report confirms his optimism. 'When researchers hit a paywall online, they turn to Google to search for free copies — and, increasingly, they are finding them,' he says."

Comments

What about all the non-researchers?

[Wycliffe]

If I was a real researcher with a real budget, I would be happy to fork over a couple bucks to read an
article I needed to reference in my research but I would guess that there are alot more non-researchers
like typical slashdot reader than actual real researchers. I also turn to google when I hit a paywall
because it's usually more of a passing interest and I'm not going to pay $5 to $35 to read an article
that I might only understand half of anyways but it would sure be nice if there was a way to give
access to the non-professional general public as a way to pass on useful knowledge instead of hiding
it behind a paywall where only a select few people in the same field are willing to pay for it.