The rising costs university libraries are paying to access journals have implications far beyond the ivory tower. From new cancer treatments to debates about foreign policy, new information enters the public domain through academic studies. Now libraries are having trouble affording the subscriptions.
No wonder something like SciHub exists.
Ya, but it really seems like there ought to be a nonprofit organization that will peer review and publish articles.
It should be an unconditional requirement that the day your university receives a penny of public funding your papers must be public domain.
The issue isn’t that no free options exist. It’s that using them doesn’t get you the reputation needed to be funded.