ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I want to explore some of the fundamental presumptions that underlie the case, as it has often been made, for open access. This will help us to begin to explore arguments for OA, which I contend are commonly based on an essentially positivist view of science, which sees scientific knowledge as normative and universal. The question of the relationship between the case for OA and ideas about knowledge itself – what constitutes valid and valuable knowledge – will underlie a great deal of the discussion in this book. I will relate the common arguments for OA (and open science more broadly) to Robert Merton's influential scientific norms. The social and political context within which Merton was working, of mid-20th-century liberalism, then comes into view, and it is notable that liberal theory is the philosophical basis that implicitly underpins the case for OA as it is often made. I will suggest these widely used arguments for OA, although helpful in many ways, only get us so far. They are, however, an important starting point, and help to establish some key principles of the case for OA that are often taken for granted, including the universal value of scientific outputs and OA as a form of distributive epistemic justice, which I will discuss.
