I have written the following essay on this subject:
All results of publicly funded scientific studies should be made available to the general public free of charge. Scientific journals that charge a subscription or newsstand price are profiting unfairly.
Any comments and remarks are most welcome - thanks a lot :)
Unhindered access to knowledge is crucial for the further advancement of technology and science, and is a cornerstone in the culture of the modern liberal democracy, which we prize so in western societies. Therefore, this knowledge should be available to those who seek it; this is especially true for publicly funded scientific studies.
If all knowledge was proprietairy, the resulting fragmentation of knowledge could make further discoveries impossible as no one would have acces to the required building blocks of knowledge. This is especially relevant for the natural sciences, where one discovery builds upon many of the others; like Einstien's physics build on Newton's.
Furthermore, without a well educated public, a democracy cannot work properly; without information about the state of the world and the society in which one finds oneself, is it not possible for the public to hold the politicians responsible for their actions. Part of this knowledge comes from well conducted scientific studies in the social sciences.
However, the creation of scientific studies is not in itself sufficient. A method for the dispersion of the results is required as well; knowledge is not useful unless it is used, and I find that the relevance of a particular study increases with the number of people who knows about it.
It is on this background that publicly founded studies should be made available free of charge. Historically, scientific journals had an important role to play in the distribution of publicly founded studies, as these had to be printed and distributed physically which required printing facilities as well as logistic operations. It is probable that an operation like this is more efficient as a private firm. Today, the internet has made the multiplication and dispersion of knowledge almost free of charge, and the journal as we know it is more or less obsolete in regard to publicizing publicly funded studies.
When these journals profit from from the publication of these studies, they are, in effect, making citizens pay for the access to to this knowledge. But they have already paid for creation of this knowledge through their taxes, and since it is possible to distribute this knowledge more or less free of charge, there is no reason why they should pay again. The profit of these journals is therefore highly unfair, but the real problem lies not with the journals but with the government's conditions for funding scientific studies. Because of the beneficial nature of proliferation of scientific knowledge to society as a whole from knowledge, which I have analysed above, it makes good sense for the government to demand that publicly funded studies are also available to the general public.
For what purpose has this essay been written? Your arguments are solid but I'd like to see better organization. Lay out your arguments in the first paragraph and then address each in turn. Depending on the purpose of the essay, you may wish to use some supporting evidence, such as the amount spent by the government on research or the average cost of a subscription to a scientific journal.
Hi, thanks for the remarks, i can see what you mean about the organization. It is written as a practice for a GRE issue essay (as it says in the title), and to make this a meaningful exercise for me, I have not included any information I won't have access to on test day.
Cheers, Ulribe.
