The world’s knowledge is out there—but who is it for? And who gets to read it?

Join researcher and knowledge-connector Eleanor Colla as we unpack the hidden politics of academic publishing and the Open Access movement. In this talk, we explore why so much scholarly work is locked behind paywalls, how colonialist gatekeeping still shapes who gets to know what, and why even ‘free’ research can’t always be accessed, let alone be accessible.

But it’s not all doom and jargon! There are practical ways to access and use academic research without a university ID, from Open Access repositories to clever workarounds. Because Grokkists are more than just readers, we can discover what it means to reclaim our role as knowers—intellectually curious people making meaning beyond institutional walls.

Whether you’re a research enthusiast, an independent thinker, or just someone who’s hit one too many “Pay $49.99 for this article” pop-ups, this is your invitation to crack open the system and make knowledge work for you and your communities.

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This piece began as a live event on the Grokkist Network. Watch the edited recording or, if you prefer to read, we’ve adapted the text of Eleanor’s full talk into a warm, narrative form below.

📅 See our events calendar for upcoming gatherings like this or find out how to host your own.

Watch the Full Recording

Knowledge as a privilege, not a given

Before anything else, I want to start with where I am and who I am.

I’m speaking to you from unceded land—specifically, the lands of the Wurundjeri, Woi Wurrung, and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. This place, now called Melbourne, is where I live and work. Always was, always will be. The care and resistance of Indigenous communities here—and across all lands shaped by colonialism—runs deep. That matters, especially in conversations about access, ownership, and the power of knowledge.

When I talk about open access, I do so from a particular standpoint. I’m a white woman who speaks English at home. I’m tertiary educated, securely housed, and gainfully employed. I’ve worked in libraries, on editorial boards, and within the labyrinth of higher education. I’ve got the credentials and connections that unlock a lot of doors. And I’m able to say things—sometimes critical things—about the institutions I work in, without fearing for my job. That, too, is a kind of access.

I also live with chronic physical and mental health conditions. They’re not invisible to me, but they’re often easy to mask. I’m not routinely othered because of them. And when it comes to accessing spaces—physical, digital, institutional—I usually don’t think twice. That’s privilege. And part of what I want to explore here is how that privilege shapes not just what we know, but how we get to know it.

Access is never just about technology. It’s about power, systems, and the bodies in which we move through the world. If we’re going to talk about opening access, we have to start by acknowledging who’s already inside—and who’s been kept out.

Access is never just about technology. It’s about power, systems, and the bodies in which we move through the world.

Why closed was the default (and still lingers)

It’s tempting to think of closed access as a kind of oversight—an outdated system no one’s gotten around to fixing yet. But the truth is, closed was never a bug. It was always the design.

In its early days, academic publishing had a tangible cost. Journals were printed, bound, and shipped. Someone had to cover those costs, and so the model that emerged was one of paid subscriptions—mostly funded by libraries and institutions. It made a kind of sense.

But when we shifted to digital publishing, the costs didn’t disappear—they just stopped being justified in the same way. Today, publishers like Nature can charge thousands of dollars for an article, despite the fact that peer review is unpaid, editorial work is often voluntary, and the infrastructure is mostly digital. So where’s all that money going?

And then there’s the deeper question: who does the system serve?

Academic publishing hasn’t just been shaped by economics—it’s been built atop colonial structures that control who gets to speak, who gets to be cited, who gets to be taken seriously. Even now, Western, English-speaking, Global North institutions dominate the landscape. Their publishing norms set the standard. And their citation economies create feedback loops that sideline work from the margins.

Academic publishing hasn’t just been shaped by economics—it’s been built atop colonial structures that control who gets to speak, who gets to be cited, who gets to be taken seriously.

There are exceptions—places that offer glimpses of something more equitable. Indonesia, for example, has been publishing open access research since the 1970s. Brazil’s SciELO platform offers open repositories in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, backed by federal support.

But these efforts are often overshadowed by a global push toward “prestigious” (read: Western) journals. And so even when a different model exists, it struggles to be seen as valid.

Closed access isn’t just a legacy problem. It’s a system that actively reproduces itself—economically, culturally, and linguistically. And unless we name that, we’ll keep mistaking the lock for the door.

When ‘open’ still isn’t accessible

Even when something is technically open, that doesn’t mean it’s accessible in any meaningful way.

Take academic papers. You can find an increasing number of them online for free, thanks to open access mandates, repositories, and journals. But if you’ve ever tried to read one without a background in the field, you’ll know how quickly you can feel shut out. The language is dense, the structure rigid, the assumptions unspoken.

Even as someone who reads academic literature regularly, I often have to slow down, re-read, or step away and come back later. Sometimes I still don’t fully understand what a paper is trying to say—and that’s with years of practice navigating this world.

Then there’s the issue of audience. So much research is written about people who would never be considered part of its intended readership. Studies on disability that aren’t accessible to disabled readers. Research on public education that can’t be understood by teachers or students. Academic work often functions like a hall of mirrors—circulating among peers, reflecting itself back, but rarely reaching the communities it describes.

It’s not always about gatekeeping in a malicious sense. Often it’s just inertia. Scholars are trained to write for other scholars, to meet the expectations of peer reviewers and journal editors. But the effect is the same: a kind of semantic fencing that keeps outsiders out, even when the gate is technically open.

And this is where I think it’s worth broadening our idea of access. It’s not just about availability. It’s about usability, readability, navigability. It’s about creating knowledge that invites people in—not just to consume it, but to engage, challenge, remix, and respond.

It’s not just about availability. It’s about usability, readability, navigability.

Because otherwise, we’re not really opening access. We’re just repainting the walls.

Toolkit for the knowledge-hungry

So, what if you’re curious, under-caffeinated, and sitting outside the gates of institutional access—how do you actually get your hands on the knowledge you’re hungry for?

There are ways in. They’re not always seamless, but they exist. And once you know where to look, it becomes easier to navigate around the walls instead of smashing into them. Here’s a toolkit I often share with people who want to access academic work without a university login. Some of it is perfectly above-board. Some of it operates in the gray. All of it is shaped by a belief that knowledge should circulate.

🗂 Repositories:

Repositories are digital libraries, often hosted by universities or governments, where research outputs are stored—sometimes as preprints, sometimes as final versions. If you know what you’re after, you can often find a version of a journal article tucked away in an institutional repository. It may not be the typeset PDF, but it’ll get you the information.

Start with:

🔬 Preprints:

Preprints are versions of research articles shared before peer review. They’re especially common in physics, medicine, and increasingly in the social sciences.

Try:

These can be goldmines for timely, cutting-edge thinking—even if they haven’t gone through formal peer review yet.

🧩 Plugins and Hacks:

Browser extensions can do a lot of the work for you.

  • Unpaywall: tells you when a free version of a paywalled article is available.
  • Retraction Watch: not for access, but for quality control. Make sure that paper hasn’t been pulled for misconduct or errors.

And yes—Sci-Hub exists. It’s technically illegal in many places, but widely used. It scrapes copies of paywalled articles and makes them available for free. Use at your own discretion. It exists because people are tired of being asked to pay for knowledge that was publicly funded and reviewed by unpaid labour.

🤝 Your Network:

Don’t underestimate the power of asking. Email the author directly—they’ll often be delighted someone is reading their work. Ask a friend with library access. Reach out in professional communities. Many institutions allow alumni access to certain resources. The system assumes you’ll feel shame about not belonging. But there’s no shame in wanting to read.

Reclaiming our role as knowers

For me, the most important part of this conversation isn’t just how to access knowledge—it’s who gets to be a knower.

Academia has long positioned itself as the gatekeeper of legitimate knowledge. If you’re not part of the system—if you don’t have the credentials, the institutional affiliation, the fluency in the right language—it’s easy to feel like an outsider looking in. That your questions don’t count. That your insights don’t belong. That you can read, but you can’t contribute.

But I don’t believe that. And I don’t think many grokkists do either.

Curiosity, meaning-making, and insight aren’t the exclusive domain of the academy. In fact, some of the most profound, nuanced, and grounded thinking I’ve encountered has come from people working outside formal institutions—teachers, artists, carers, nerds, activists, poets. People who think across disciplines and in between roles. People who live with questions, not just theories.

Curiosity, meaning-making, and insight aren’t the exclusive domain of the academy.

Reclaiming our role as knowers means rejecting the idea that expertise is the only valid form of authority. It means recognising that lived experience, relational intelligence, and embodied ways of knowing are just as valuable—often more so—than abstract knowledge cut off from context.

It also means taking care with how we share what we know. If we want to resist the enclosure of knowledge, we have to resist the impulse to hoard it in our own ways. We have to think about legibility, generosity, translation—not in the reductive sense, but in ways that make ideas more accessible, inhabitable, and communal.

So yes, we need open access to research. But we also need to foster open pathways for thinking, questioning, and creating meaning together. Because knowledge isn’t just a product. It’s a relationship.

Further Explorations and Invitations

This piece is just one opening into a much larger conversation. If you’re someone who’s ever felt the friction of trying to access knowledge that feels like it should be yours—or someone who’s wondered whether your own knowing counts—you’re not alone. And you’re not wrong to wonder.

If you want to dig deeper, try listening to the full talk, or exploring some of the supplementary links below.

And if something in here sparked something in you—curiosity, frustration, a sense of recognition—I invite you to carry that into your own circles, projects, or questions.

Because the real work of access isn’t just about systems. It’s about relationships. Who we share with, how we show up, what we choose to make legible.

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This piece began as a live event on the Grokkist Network. See our events calendar for upcoming gatherings like this or find out how to host your own.