I believe Martin made his book available as a PDF to further show his support for the freedom of knowledge. Throughout his chapter he does raise fairly intriguing insight on the fact that the majority of knowledge around the world is controlled by hierarchies and organized by certain disciplinarians. The sad truth about it all is that it is all for the gain of money. In “The politics of research” Martin explains this, “The important point, though, is that members of each discipline jealously guard their own little patch of knowledge. They attempt to control teaching of students in their discipline, appointments in the field and the type of research that is published in the field’s central journals” (p.128). By doing this certain places such as universities are only given access to these databases and knowledge by funding them in a large way.
Another unfortunate fact is that many academics apparently look down on schools and universities that seem to be popular. As Martin says, “The latter are a threat because they have a power base not controlled by the discipline itself”(p.131). Even though these particular universities may be filled with highly skilled scholars they are still perceived as suspicious and they are not guaranteed access to the wide sources of information that is provided to others. I presume that scholarship should be liberated and we all should be given access to the many different scholarly data out there to add on to our own knowledge.
