Should Knowledge Be Free?

I was in the final year of my engineering course where I was researching on brain signal, electroencephalogram(EEG) and how technology can be used to create make a brain interface with a computer especially for people with quadriplegia or ALS who are not able to use a mouse or a keyboard. This task had me searching throughout the web for researchers who might have published their findings to make it available to the world wide web. I did have success in finding a lot of papers published but faced a big hurdle here. The publisher sites hosting the papers were asking for a expensive subscription for a single research paper. On top of it, a single subscription does not open up the way for the rest of the publications as each of them had their own paywall.

I was angry and frustrated on the way knowledge had been monetized. Should knowledge be free? I thought to myself. So I dig deeper and found out that the payment only goes to the publisher and not to the authors who have put in all the effort to work on the research and put their findings into the paper. On top of that the authors might have to pay up for the conferences just to get their papers published in a journal. Heck, even the reviewers who peer review these papers mostly do it for free. So neither the researchers, authors or the reviewers were spared in this paywall of sorts. Why do they still publish? What's the price for? One must ask. It looks like it is for the reputation that these publishers of the journals have, which adds to the credibility of the paper and it’s discovery by other researchers.

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