Access to full scholarly papers is expensive which means that people just aren’t able to access the raw information for their own studies or just to draw their own conclusions. The system is not one that’s greatly favored by people and in response to that, Quantitative Science Studies was created, the newest open access journal.

This journal was started by members of the editorial board of Journal of Infrometrics who had resigned over the restrictive of access practices. The journal will be open access and funded by processing fees and grants.

This is a big step in the direction of open information and it probably wouldn’t have happened if not for the work of Sci-Hub, the torrent site dedicated to academic papers. The site has built a library of over 70 million papers in a variety of subjects. The rise in journals coming out from behind paywalls probably wouldn’t be a thing if not for that work.