Information privilege
Information privilege is the advantage, opportunity, right, and affordances granted by status and positionality via class, race, gender, culture, sexuality, occupation, institutional affiliation, and political perspective. In this article, information privilege is being referred to in terms of having unlimited access to high quality scholarly information by having a substantial relationship to an institution that grants you access. Scholarly information is being restricted and held back form some people and allowed to others who can afford it like college students who pay tuition for it. Hundreds of thousands or millions of tuition dollars are being paid to databases and journal subscriptions for access to research article and scholarly journals. Research and scholarly articles are not free, they entail paying an amount of money for them, people who have access to these articles pay directly or indirectly for them. Some have personal monthly subscriptions to them while for others it I included in their tuition. Anyone can have access to this information once they pay directly or indirectly, for example; public libraries pay for scholarly subscription with tax payer’s money.
The playing field for accessing information should be leveled since the authors of the scholarly journals are not payed for submitting their hard work, their work/research should be free to everyone regardless of whether its paid for or not. Journal databases charge a hefty amount to allow access to research that they did not conduct and pay for. On average, Tier 1 Universities pay ~$6,000,000 for journal access. Tier 2 Universities pay ~$1,800,000. Some individuals who are not privileged enough to have access to these scholarly articles could solve some of the world’s most pressing issues like cancer if they are giving access to further their research or start their research. I am among the lucky and privileged few who have access to high quality scholarly information which is wrong because everyone or most people should be able to have access to high quality information to better the world. In order to change this I can petition and spread information about this unfairness by speaking and posting articles about what information privilege is because most people are not aware of this.
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Sources:
https://infomational.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/on-information-privilege/
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-annual-subscription-cost-to-universities-for-scientific-journals
