Restricting access to this resource, which can help scientists find tests, treatments, and even cures for Covid-19, is shortsighted and unethical, with tangible impacts on human life.

Shockingly, a large fraction of the world’s scientific knowledge — most of which is produced by taxpayer-funded research programs — is locked behind paywalls of private publishers that continue to argue for “embargo periods” and closed archives to maximize their control over access to research and their ability to profit from this control. Under this system, research papers are sequestered for a period of time behind paywalls, ensuring that only paying subscribers can read them. This embargo period can range from months to years, and in some cases effectively lasts forever.

Tuesday marks a long-awaited breakthrough, as Springer Nature, one of the world’s most important scientific publishers, seals a transformative agreement with the 10-campus University of California (UC) system. Under this agreement, everyone in the world will have free and open access to all UC research published in more than 2,700 of Springer Nature’s journals, and all UC students, faculty, and researchers will gain access to more than 1,000 journals to which the system did not previously subscribe.Not all steps toward open access to the scientific literature have been successful. Since a breakdown in negotiations between universities and the publishing giant Elsevier over subscription prices and freer access, large sectors of the biomedical research community, including the entire UC system, have been denied access to vital research results contained in hundreds of scientific journals owned by that company. MIT announced last week that, after reaching a similar impasse, it had called off its own negotiations with Elsevier over open access. Elsevier, it must be noted, enjoys steady profit margins in the range of 37 percent.