aaron-swartz.md (3318B)
1 # Aaron Swartz 2 3 [Aaron Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz) passed away 4 ten years ago, at the age of 26. During his short life he contributed 5 to multiple projects, including 6 [Creative Commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons), 7 [RSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS), 8 [Markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) and 9 [reddit](https://www.reddit.com). 10 11 If you are interested in learning more about Aaron's life, 12 you can watch the biographical documentary 13 [*The Internet's Own Boy*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy), 14 which is freely available online. You can also still access 15 [Aaron's website](http://www.aaronsw.com) and read 16 [his old blog posts](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog). 17 18 I don't want to write a long post about Aaron's life. 19 Instead, I'll take this chance to talk about 20 [Open Access](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access), which was 21 one of Aaron's main battles as an activist. I'll try to be concise 22 and go straight to the point. 23 24 A word of warning: even though I pledged not to write "political" posts 25 in this blog, I do have a strong opinion on this subject, and I won't 26 try to hide it. 27 28 ## Open access 29 30 Most academic journals make scientific articles available at very high 31 prices, making them practically unaccessible for people who are not 32 affiliated with a university in a wealthy country. To make things worse, 33 the people involved in producing these articles - the scientists who 34 write them and those who review them - do not get any revenue from this. 35 36 This system made sense before the Internet, when distributing journals 37 actually required some effort. The only reasons academics rely on it 38 nowadays are prestige and having their work reviewed. The latter is a 39 necessary step for science, and not many peer-reviewed journals offer 40 open access. 41 42 I believe the existence of academic journals that do not offer open access 43 is unacceptable in the present day. As Aaron Swartz wrote in his 2008 44 [*Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto*](./goam.txt), sharing knowledge is 45 a moral imperative. I do stand by this principle. 46 47 The *Manifesto* may have had little practical 48 consequnces, but it has probably inspired 49 [Alexandra Elbakyan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan) 50 to create [Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub) in 2011. 51 Sci-Hub is an online repository that gives free access to millions 52 of research papers. This is of course illegal in most countries, but 53 for many people it is the only way to access this material. For legal 54 reasons the website is forced to change domain from time to time, but 55 it is currently accessible at [sci-hub.ru](https://sci-hub.ru). 56 57 Thanks to the Internet we could all have easy access to an incredible 58 amount of knowledge, but some of it is still locked behind a paywall. 59 I am hopeful this will change, and the people who fought against this 60 system will be remembered as heroes, not criminals. But the path to get 61 there is still long. 62 63 ## Eulogy 64 65 66 *Aaron is dead.* 67 68 *Wanderers in this crazy world,* 69 *we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.* 70 71 *Hackers for right, we are one down,* 72 *we have lost one of our own.* 73 74 *Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders,* 75 *parents all,* 76 *we have lost a child.* 77 78 *Let us all weep.* 79 80 -- [Tim Berners-Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee)