An inaccessible scientific article about the growing inaccessibility of science

• Nov 13, 2025 • by Paul Ingraham
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A weekly nugget or two of pain science news and ideas for patients and pros, usually 400–1000 words. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

This screenshot went wild on social media a while back:

Screenshot of ironically expensive paywall for a scientific article titled “The growing inaccessibility of science.”

Nature later took down the paywall on this (ancient) article — no doubt because of the flood of traffic! It’s easy to see why it went viral. A $200/year price tag on an article about the growing inaccessibility of science? That’s some chef’s kiss irony!

However, as much as I’d like to see all science be free, I don’t actually think $200/year is an outrageous price for what Nature offers. And if any individual would pay that, wouldn’t it be someone exactly like me, a science journalist? But I don’t subscribe to most journals, because the articles I care about are scattered across far too many of them, despite my strong focus on pain.

The fees charged by most journals for temporary access to one article are usually well over USD $30; here’s one I wanted today that is, ouch, $68! Or $457 for the entire issue! Now that kind of pricing is absurd, and always has been. I do pay those fees occasionally, but less than I used to, because I have gotten better at getting free full text versions. For instance, just a few minutes after hitting that $68 paywall, I had the PDF directly from the lead author — because they can do that, and they are generally happy to.

In my “Research Tips” article, I have an updated list of options for finding full-text papers (that link goes right to the list).