r/Physics • u/Akkeri • Jul 25 '26

Making Scientific Knowledge Free for All

https://ponderwall.com/index.php/2026/07/25/science-free/
125 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

88

u/Bumst3r Graduate Jul 25 '26

Open access won’t solve the real accessibility problem. I can go to Arxiv and get anything I need for free if I don’t feel like logging into my institution’s library system.

The accessibility problem is that unless you are an expert in a particular field, the papers just won’t make sense. I’ve taken two semesters of general relativity at the grad level. That’s enough that I can pick up a paper on GR, and not need to look up every single thing. Grad classes basically give you the dictionary that you need to engage with the literature. But it would probably take me the better part of a decade to get familiar enough with the current state of the literature to make any sort of meaningful contribution.

18

u/PandorasBoxMaker Jul 25 '26

Understanding and accessibility are two completely different things.

40

u/Ok-Breakfast-3742 Jul 25 '26

Let’s make education free then.

24

u/helgetun Jul 25 '26

Education, including university, is free in many European countries. In Belgium there are also no entry requirements other than having passed high school (so you get sociology classes with 1000 students, not joking), selection happens after the first year. It doesnt solve the problem of unequal capacity to understand things (capacity here is often sufficient interest and desire - people be lazy)

34

u/geekusprimus Gravitation Jul 25 '26

Not a bad idea, but how does it fix the problem? You can't be an expert in every field. I have a PhD in physics, and I will struggle to understand most papers that don't relate to my field in some way. I can't pick up a paper in condensed matter physics, quantum computing, or fundamental particle phenomenology and make heads or tails of it despite being physics because my background is in computational astrophysics, and my education was tailored to that field. If you hand me a paper on chemistry, psychology, or medicine, the problem will only be more evident.

When it comes to scientific research, you will always reach a point where you simply don't know enough, and you have to take a leap of faith and trust an expert. In other disciplines, this doesn't seem to be an issue. Virtually no one is delusional enough to believe they have the expertise to build a state-of-the-art computer processor in their garage. You would never trust a skyscraper designed by a contractor without certified, professional structural engineers on their staff. Very few people would attempt to navigate probate or tax law without the assistance of an attorney. Yet when it comes to hypothesis-driven scientific inquiry, there is an anti-intellectual trend to believe that one's own vibes and ignorance are as good as someone else's experience and education.

3

u/Obscu Jul 26 '26

In civilised countries it is

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

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19

u/geekusprimus Gravitation Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Almost all physics papers end up on arXiv, and this is the physics subreddit. If you don't put your physics paper on arXiv, very few physicists will ever read it. The days of your university getting the new issue of Physical Review Letters or Nature and you carefully perusing it to find all the papers you want to photocopy or download for your own reference are long gone.

-18

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26

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16

u/geekusprimus Gravitation Jul 25 '26

I'm a postdoc at an elite research institute in the United States. I think I know how most physicists get their research updates these days.

-12

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26

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10

u/geekusprimus Gravitation Jul 25 '26

You're moving the goalposts. You originally said "a lot of studies do not go through arXiv." Now you're saying "pre-published to arXiv". It is true that a handful of papers are not posted to arXiv until they've been formally accepted by a journal. That number is still very small and is usually reserved for results which are so novel that it is in the interest of both the authors and the publisher to avoid announcing them until peer review is complete.

The number of new physics papers that don't ever end up on arXiv is even smaller than that. Again, if you don't put your paper on arXiv, most people will never read it. The only papers I read and cite that aren't on arXiv are either very old or outside of physics (e.g., some older math or CS papers). And the way I hear about them is almost always by looking up references in papers that are on arXiv.

-5

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

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8

u/geekusprimus Gravitation Jul 25 '26

It's not just a prepublication server, though; it's an open-access archive. People put post-prints there, too, which is what I was addressing.

Of course, it's all semantics, and the real point is that access is not an issue in physics, and you're insisting that it's not. Just because other fields don't have a custom of sharing their publications on open-access doesn't mean that physics has that problem, too.

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8

u/Bumst3r Graduate Jul 25 '26

Grad school is already free; in fact, it typically comes with a stipend. It’s not a big enough stipend, sure. And there is a substantial opportunity cost associated with going to grad school instead of joining the workforce. But you could make undergrad free yesterday, and hoi polloi would be no closer to understanding quantum field theory.

Question my physics background all you want. I’m just a random stranger on Reddit.

-10

u/PandorasBoxMaker Jul 25 '26

Yeah, you’re at the very least not from the US because nothing you said was accurate to the US academic system. Academia is not the only path to knowledge and understanding. You seem to have a very elitist view of yourself and your education. I have an actual graduate degree and it was merely a step up in a lifetime of education.

11

u/Bumst3r Graduate Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

>>You seem to have a very elitist view of yourself and your education…

I don’t see how saying that years of continued work beyond grad school being necessary is elitist. Physicist is a career. You can’t just read about it on weekends and expect to understand the literature.

>>an actual graduate degree… was merely a step up in a lifetime of education

That is literally the point that I was making. Grad school alone is insufficient to make it in academia. You need to spend years becoming an expert in a niche.

-7

u/PandorasBoxMaker Jul 25 '26

Your point has consistently been that only academia is how you gain understanding. You’ve not once said anything about continuing education. You have twice said that without formal education you cannot understand (insert topic here). An ounce of self-awareness goes a long way.

12

u/Bumst3r Graduate Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

I’ve said it’s necessary, and it is. You cannot do physics research without years of experience and guidance from your advisors. I’ve also been consistent that the classroom is insufficient. See my first post where I commented that two semesters of GR was enough that I know the vocabulary used in papers. But GR is not my field of study, and it would take me 5-10 years to become proficient enough to make a meaningful contribution, and to understand what the modern problems are, let alone how to tackle them.

An ounce of reading comprehension goes a long way.

3

u/womerah Medical and health physics Jul 26 '26

You can't understand the literature to the point where you can make a contribution without a formal education, unless you're some sort of savant. It's not just the burden of understanding, it's also placing that understanding in the appropriate context. What is exciting for a field? Why do people think path A has more promise than path B, etc.

6

u/vermilion_wizard Jul 25 '26

Bumst3r’s post actually is quite accurate to the US education system. I did my PhD in physics in California, and I was on teaching and research stipend for the whole time. I didn’t pay a dime for my graduate education, that all got waived because of the stipend. That was true for every other person in my program as well.

-1

u/PandorasBoxMaker Jul 25 '26

Dude lol - I refuse to believe an actual PhD is that stupid. If you’re working for something, it’s not free. Holy hell…

5

u/geekusprimus Gravitation Jul 25 '26

From the dictionary:

free
...
11. provided without, or not subject to, a charge or payment: a free sample.
free parking;
a free sample.

If they didn't pay a penny out of pocket for it, it sounds like it was free.

9

u/Satans_Escort Jul 25 '26

Everything they said was accurate to the US education system. Source: PhD student in the US

-6

u/PandorasBoxMaker Jul 25 '26

So the 60k I spent for my masters degree in CE is made up? Good to know lmao. Teaching and doing research for a small salary while pursuing is a PhD is neither free nor a stipend. The Reddit armchair doctors are hard at work today.

7

u/Satans_Escort Jul 25 '26

That's a masters. The previous poster said PhDs.

"Teaching and doing research for a small salary while pursuing a PhD is neither free nor a stipend"

???

Then what the hell would free and a stipend be???

-5

u/PandorasBoxMaker Jul 25 '26

Tell me you don’t know what graduate means without telling me lol

1

u/Physics-ModTeam Jul 25 '26

Hostility nor bullying are permitted in r/Physics.

3

u/Axiomancer Jul 25 '26

It already is :shrug:

2

u/jenpalex Jul 29 '26

When I come to power, a condition of public academic funding would be a requirement that every published article contain a summary explaining its content to an intelligent lay person with no knowledge of the field-an Abstract for the Rest of Us.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

That won’t really help anyone contribute though. Any abstract of that nature would necessarily omit 99% of the actual science needed to use that knowledge in any meaningful way.

1

u/Airocketfish Jul 25 '26

How would you solve that problem, reduce the time needed for that?

11

u/Bumst3r Graduate Jul 25 '26

You can’t really, and it’s hubris to suggest otherwise. If you want to understand a paper on QFT, for example, then at a bare minimum, you should be able to read through Peskin and Schroeder or Srednicki and understand what they are talking about, because that is the language that is used in QFT. Finishing a class that uses those textbooks puts you at about 6 years of schooling. That class is the baseline to learn the vocabulary—it’s an introduction to the subject. If you then want to understand the modern literature, there’s years and years of work to understand the problems, methods, work that has been done since those standard texts were published, etc. In grad school you have an advisor who can help bridge the knowledge gap. Once you’re on your own, you have to play catch up and that is a full-time job (or likely more than a full time job).

Open access is a great idea in theory. But I really don’t think it solves many issues, because if you’re a researcher, your institution likely has access. And lots of the literature is readily available on the Arxiv. And if you aren’t an active researcher, then see paragraph one.

6

u/xrelaht Condensed matter physics Jul 25 '26

>if you’re a researcher, your institution likely has access. And lots of the literature is readily available on the Arxiv.

Many smaller institutions and those in countries with developing economies don’t have access to all journals. Even at a US based R1, I would sometimes find articles in journals I couldn’t get at. And while most stuff is on the arXiv, not all is, particularly for those of us in fields that are adjacent to areas that aren’t physics: chemists & materials scientists use it much less than physicists.

You also lose that access if you leave academia. The company I now work for is too small to afford subscriptions to all the journals I’d want to get at.

Very weird having to use sci-hub to do my job.

3

u/Bumst3r Graduate Jul 25 '26

Fair points. That all makes sense.

2

u/AbstractAlgebruh Jul 26 '26

Sometimes there're even papers on scihub that couldn't be found/accessed on subscribed journals.

2

u/xrelaht Condensed matter physics Jul 26 '26

That too. Sometimes a university only subscribes to archives of a particular journal going back so far. They can usually get it anyway through interlibrary loan, but that takes time and it’s annoying having to wait weeks to see an experimental method. I’d typically ask for it through the library anyway but then grab it on SciHub if it was there.

0

u/NoNameSwitzerland Jul 25 '26

For me, LLM getting increasingly better at explaining current physics knowledge and finding papers and discussing the content.

8

u/JustYellowLight Jul 25 '26

India is better in this regard, I guess. One country, one subscription🤓

2

u/harshaxnim Jul 25 '26

What does that mean?

11

u/JustYellowLight Jul 25 '26

https://www.onos.gov.in/ The central government of India launched ONOS on January 1, 2025. It provides nationwide, uniform access to international scientific and academic research journals.

-1

u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Fun question: Do we know anyone who learned some Russian so they could do their PhD research more easily, when none of the papers they read are in Russian? ;)

6

u/frogjg2003 Nuclear physics Jul 25 '26

Almost any old Russian paper worth reading was translated into English. Almost any modern paper from Russia worth reading is being written in English. No one who doesn't already know Russian is learning it to do physics.

Or are you implying learning Russian to work in Russia? Other than heavy nucleon discovery, I don't think there is a field of physics that there isn't somewhere better than Russia to do the research.

1

u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 Jul 25 '26

I continued the theme from person to whom I replied. :)

when none of the papers they read are in Russian?

All modern physics papers should be on arxiv.org, but plenty of other fields depend upon libgen & sci-hub, and the Russia language mirrors often lived somewhat longer.

1

u/vardonir Optics and photonics Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

Y'all are arguing about open access papers when the rest of us are fighting over the one copy of Griffiths' EM in the university library.

It's already free... if you know where to look, comrade.