I have blogged before about why I feel that open access to research and educational materials is an important step forward for society. This promotes the learning of those who struggle to access conventional learning modalities (e.g. lower socioeconomic groups who are traditionally excluded from universities) and those who are simply casually interested in learning something new without the need to commit to long-term and expensive courses. The release of data also helps to facilitate the verification of findings in the scientific sphere to avoid the problems associated with scientific publishing.
Katatrepsis 