"Freedom from" versus "freedom to" in the world of science journals

A central charge, from some publishers and some academics is that Plan S is an infringement of academic freedom to choose how and where your work is published and it therefore unethical.

Blink.

Whut ?

Kudos to the author of this piece for the detailed legalistic analysis of why this is wrong, but surely from an ethical standpoint this is Bloody Obvious ?

As I understand it, the Plan calls for all publically-funded research to be made Open Access, i.e. freely available to the public. Since the public funded the research, they ought to get to read it if they want to. As far as I know it doesn't affect private research, and nor should it. If you privately commission a study, I don't think you're invariably, necessarily obligated to release its findings or data (though that's not to say there might not be some cases, e.g. legal proceedings, in which release could be demanded) to the public. But you wouldn't expect the researchers to turn around and say, "I've published the findings in this journal you can't read, because I'm exercising my academic freedom". You'd feel a common-sense entitlement to see what you'd paid for, unless for some strange reason you'd previously agreed an exception with the researchers. Could happen, but unlikely. Generally speaking you'd say the researcher was being unethical by denying your right to inspect the findings.

And so if the public fund research and the researcher has the option and ability to make it publicly visible, then the default expectation should be that it will be public. For them to actively choose an alternative, unless their are compelling reasons to do so (currently Open Access is frickin' expensive), is clearly unethical. Removing a freedom to do an unethical thing isn't itself a fundamentally unethical act - it's normally known as, for instance, "justice". Unless I'm missing something obvious, I find this "infringes academic freedom" argument to be so stupid I can't believe this is really what's bothering them, even if they think it is (with the possible exception of a few Randian devotees).

People are weird.

http://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2018/10/01/academic-freedom-and-responsibility-why-plan-s-is-not-unethical/