Research Activity 1

Should Academic Research Be Free For Everyone?

Access to certain sources of information comes at a premium these days. Institutions as well as individuals are forced to spend hundreds, if not thousands, or even millions, of dollars in order to have access to information from reliable academic sources. Considering the large number of people who need and use this information on a regular basis, this seems to be an unfair practice. All information- academic or not- should be free for everybody.

There are a lot of people in this world who need access to this kind of information and simply can’t afford to have access to it. Students, teachers, libraries, and universities are amongst the countless list of people who require access to academic information for one reason or another. Most of the sources for academic research charge a hefty monthly or yearly fee in order to access the information- even if the user only requires the information once, there is still a fee associated with accessing one article, one time. According to Kate Murphy’s “Should All Research Papers Be Free?” in the New York Times, “legally downloading a single journal article when you don’t have a subscription costs around $30,” which may not seem like a lot of money, but it “adds up quickly considering a search on even narrow topics can return hundreds if not thousands of articles” (Murphy). While a subscription grants access to countless pieces of valuable academic research, sometimes the fee associated just isn’t worth it. Students, independent researchers, and underfunded libraries don’t always have the means to pay for access to this extremely useful information. When the individuals and institutions who need this kind of information the most are often, for lack of a better word, broke, it seems almost immoral to place such a hefty price tag on such useful information.

It’s understandable why information costs money, especially academic research- it has value. These researchers should be receiving adequate compensation for their work. Unfortunately, researchers and professors need to publish their work, usually in prestigious journals, so that they can receive funding and get tenure to keep their jobs. Some of these journals and the websites that house them pay nothing to the researcher, but instead charge them a publishing fee to have their work put in their journal and into a database. Enago Academy’s article, “What is the Real Cost of Scientific Publishing?” states that the “standard procedure” for “peer-reviewed scientific journals” is to “charge a significant publication fee for publishing a paper, especially traditional print journals” (“What is the…”). The journals and databases turn a “20 to 30 percent” profit by charging the author or researcher a fee to have their work published and then charging other people to read the work, all without fairly compensating the creator (“What is the…”). Subscription-based journals and databases unfairly exploit the needs of researchers and consumers- yet another reason for academic research to be free.

Everyone deserves the right to have access to information- academic or otherwise. Charging people money to publish information and charging everybody else to read the information is an unfair and immoral practice used by publishers for their own personal financial gain. It’s time that information becomes readily available to all people regardless of their ability to pay for it.

Works Cited

Murphy, Kate. “Should All Research Papers Be Free?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Mar. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/should-all-research-papers-be-free.html.

“What Is the Real Cost of Scientific Publishing?” Enago Academy, 24 May 2018, www.enago.com/academy/what-is-the-real-cost-of-scientific-publishing/.