The researches we do target at improving the lives of the general public and for that matter, we use the public resources to do the researches. We publish new findings in journal articles and yet those are owned by some profit making business and we are required to pay unfairly prices for the resources that were made available by using public resources. Why is this so? Why don't we make our research articles publicly available for the general public and the industry who are sponsoring our researches? Is this at all right and fair? Is there something that I do not understand?
Hi Tadesse,
Many think that it is unfair - but many also believe that it is a necessity. All journals have running costs - and they are either charged through subscription or, in the case of open access, through manuscript processing fees. The likes of you and I would find it impractical and costly to 'set up' a journal that didn't charge some sort of fees. If we did - it would be to a very small and select audience - and the point of good research findings is to disseminate them as widely as possible to benefit as many as possible. You can directly feedback your findings to industry/stake-holders etc without the need to publish in journals through various forums.
The general and academic 'public' can bypass paying any fees to access our work through media forums - such as ResearchGate. Another good example (in my field) are databases - such as Pubmed, Cochrane Library, JBI etc - where partial (or often the case) full-text articles are freely available. Then their is open access as well.
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