Elsevier's LeapSpace and the Question Science Can't Automate

LeapSpace arrived carrying an established grievance — the open-access critique of Elsevier as a for-profit gatekeeper monetizing publicly funded science — but it did not stay there long. The more durable argument that emerged was about the act of research itself. When a tool can scan 18 million full-text paywalled papers from Elsevier and four partner publishers and return synthesized results, the question it provokes is not merely one of access fairness. It is whether the output of that process — however accurate and comprehensive — belongs in the same…