Monday, December 8, 2008

Chapter 18 - does my "science" belong to me if I make it public and free

I have studied Psychology in Tartu University, which basically means that I have some idea of how science articles are made, citated and shared. I have done many researches and used several databases to find either articles on previous works or even books about some certain topic.
I have seen how many authors are willing to give their article for students for free. I have never understood why some do not. But then again it might not be because of the authot himself, but as every scientists has to have some funds from somewhere (well, basically only a sutdent can to some research for free, and even in this case some funds like schooling is used for the student), then there are "higher" people who may say if the results can be made public for everybody or only abstract can be public and usually free.
Bsaically an Estonian psychology student never buys an article for their researhc, we either use those that are for free, take only the abstract or ignore the results all together. Fortunatelly Tartu University has agreements with several science databases that allows students to get articles from hundreds of science journals all over the world. But still even in those systems there are some articles that ask for further payment to be able to read them fully.
Although I understand that an author should protect their "inventions/results" in some way, I feel that if those results are not free for everybody to get, who are interested, it will obstuct further quick development.

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