Research advances because scientists, social scientists, researchers and scholars generally share their work, right? Well actually no, or rather it is a half-truth. For about 200 years, the research literature has been largely restricted behind a pay-barrier. Prior to that, research articles were shared freely through correspondence, though seminal books like The Origin of Species did not, because of print cost. Since then research has been restricted with the invention of the print journal and recovery of costs via subscriptions imposed on readers.

Most researchers in the West are oblivious to this, because their universities or labs pay for the subscriptions they need, totalling many millions of dollars per institution. Articles look free to them. But no university can afford to buy all of the world’s research literature, so researchers don’t know what they can’t or don’t see. Worse, less developed countries are discriminated against because they can see even less, and we also suffer because we cannot see what they are doing either. Research is in a mess. A revolution is in the wings.

The Internet could solve this problem tomorrow, but it doesn’t. The story of this article is that of recent advances.