> In some cases, members of the general public may think they are contributing to "Science", but actually they are contributing more specifically to "Paywall Science".<p>There are other options:<p>1) contributing to corporate science, which never gets published outside of internal journals but may end up influence what the company does.<p>2) the not-for-profit equivalent of 'corporate science'<p>3) contributing to "file drawer" science, of work which isn't novel enough for a journal to accept<p>For an example of all three, consider when the general public contributes information about dietary habits, where the company/not-for-profit decides to not promote X as a dietary aid because it doesn't seem to do anything, and where no journal would publish it because negative results are boring.<p>> In all these cases, I think that those people contributing to Science would not be happy if they realized up-front that their contributions are actually supporting Paywall Science.<p>No, I don't think that's the case. Plenty of people do exactly that. Look at all the people who send their DNA samples in to for-profit sequence companies, who publish some of the results but who also turn around and sell aggregated information to others.<p>Look at those who contribute their body to science, where it might be used to train doctors rather than produce publishable papers.<p>Look at those who volunteer for drug trials for for-profit industries.<p>> Are donations to scientific charities tax-deductible if those donations are used to support the creation of Paywall Science?<p>Some scientific organizations have a mailing list or a publication for members only. One is 'Chemical & Engineering News'. These publications can include scientifically useful information. I can point to papers which cite C&EN, for example, even though it's not a traditional peer reviewed source.<p>Do these sort of newsletters count as 'Paywall Science'? If so, should they be eliminated? If not, why not?