Australia’s chief scientist takes on the journal publishers gatekeeping knowledge

‘We’ve set up a crazy system where publishers own and control knowledge and we’ve let them do that.’ Photograph: Teagan Glenane/The Guardian

Before Latin mass was abandoned in the late 1960s, the average church-goer got by picking up snippets of phrases and the meanings of gestures.

To Dr Averil Cook, that’s what scientific research is like in the 21st century. The public relies on information to be synthesised for us, trickled down until it is devoid of its origin.