some people believe that it is good to share as much information as possible in scientific research, business and the academic world. Others believe that some information is too important or too valuable to be shared freely.
Advances in scientific research are based on previous work accomplished by the pioneers. People hold different views about knowledge sharing with or without fees in the academic field. While it is sometimes reasonable to pose a price on secret information, I believe that making free access to knowledge is more crucial.
On the one hand, charging some information with fees is necessary for the scientific industry. It is well acknowledged that performing scientific experiments can cost a massive amount of money to build standard facilities, buy expensive equipment and hire a team of scientists. A medication company has to undertake a high possibility of failure in repetitive animal experiments and clinical trials; hence one qualified product out of thousands of potential therapeutic targets can be introduced into the market. In this sense, it is pretty understandable for business people to keep some findings confidential in order to afford the costs, gain profits and promote more products. Additionally, scientists can be efficiently motivated when their creations are protected with patent fees.
On the contrary, I do believe that knowledge sharing is much more elementary in scientific research. Any discovery is an extension of the previous work; therefore making information public can draw other researchers’ attention to these unsolved issues and progress on them. More and more journals are publishing open-access articles nowadays for professions easy to follow. Besides, junior scientists won’t have much money to pay for each manuscript, so their early careers may benefit from free open information.
Finally, publicly published findings will be thoroughly reviewed by peers, which in turn accelerates the process of figuring out inaccurate results or academic frauds. In conclusion, charging for important information might be reasonable for gaining greater profits, while open and unlimited access is crucial regarding scientific advances.