With the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz, this issue has gone mainstream. The analogy with the start of the Arab Spring is compelling. This article needs to be updated to reflect recent events; millions of academic papers being placed in the public domain for free (usually legally). 96.231.130.15 (talk) 12:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think that by now it is pretty clear that there is no such thing as an "academic spring" and that this was just a comparison that some pundits made with the Arab Spring. The article mainly consists of a low key re-hash of three other articles on movements that either have reached their goals (and hence obsolete) or have petered out. On the other hand, there is a huge amount of replication between the articles on Elsevier, The Cost of Knowledge, open access, etc. The references are minimal (once those that are from the other articles cited here are removed). As far as I am concerned, all these articles should just simply be redirected to academic journal publishing reform, where all this stuff is being re-hashed one more time and the most-important references should the, of course, be moved there, too. At this point I really see no justification for all these different articles that basically all just repeat each other. --Randykitty (talk) 22:56, 25 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
