The argument that improved access to cutting-edge research could provide improved policymaking seems self-evident, but I would suggest the reality is slightly more complex.
John Willinsky, in his 2006 book, The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship, provides an excellent example of how, in 2003, the lead piece published in the New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ effectively dismantled US Government policy which utilised student test scores as the single measure of school effectiveness. Having undertaken a simple internet search, the author of the piece, Malcolm Gladwell, based his entire critique on an article published two weeks earlier in an open access journal from Arizona State University which challenged the reliability of the tests upon which the entire Government policy rested.
