The Financial Hurdle of an Independent Academic Researcher

Accessing academic articles as an individual unaffiliated with any academic institution can be financially daunting. Academic journals put out by major publishers require expensive access fees to access their content. Many aggregation websites, not the least Google Scholar and JSTOR, either have their own subscription fees, lead back to sites with their own fees, or are not comprehensive enough to reveal all the most relevant and up-to-date research in a particular field. While universities have the financial resources to provide their researchers with access to many of these databases, individuals cannot hope to do so.

The ways that the world of academic publishing has attempted to lower the financial barrier for researchers have been half-hearted, to say the least. While many journals are now open access, allowing anyone who wishes to access published papers, the cost of providing the open access has been transferred from the readers of the articles to their authors. The ubiquitous "article processing charges," sometimes amounting to more than USD 1,000 per article, for these open-access articles, may not sound much to researchers with university funding, but prohibitive for those who need to pay out of their own pockets.

The high costs of doing and then publishing academic research put off those who wish to take a crack at it in their free time, while gainfully employed outside academic institutions. Because they are not consistently doing academic research but just looking to satisfy some personal interest in various bits and pieces of their free time, they remain unqualified for many academic research grants provided by scholarship foundations and government-affiliated programs. Even if the independent researchers have worthy discoveries, they are likely to need to get into full-time research before they get R&D investments.

On one hand, it is good that these independent researchers are kept out of many of the most prestigious research funding out there. After all, there is plenty of doubt about the seriousness of individuals about how deep and comprehensive they can do their research if they are working a completely unrelated full-time job. The fact that they do not desire full-time commitment to their research programs means that, even if money is thrown at the research and initial results seem promising, the same researchers may not be interested enough to continue pouring energy and time into taking their research further when needed.

On the other hand, the fact that independent researchers are kept out of academic funding only helps to entrench the public perception that the world of academia remains isolated and distant from other sectors, in a way that is not conducive to academia attracting the best and bright out there to help advance knowledge. If independent researchers feel stifled by the lack of funding when doing freelance research, they are unlikely to have a positive view of full-time employment in academia, given that they already experienced how the academic world remains so separate from the "real" world outside it.

This perception of distance between the academic and non-academic world does not bode well for the future development of the former. Research akin to what is done in academia exists in various formats throughout the world outside academic institutions. Think tanks and government agencies hire researchers for basic research, while consultancies and businesses seeking to go into new markets and product lines also hire people to look into risks and opportunities in more targeted ways. The core competencies of researchers in these fields are similar to academics and attract potentially bigger pay packages.

To bridge the divide between the academic and the non-academic world, a key aspect will be changing the financial calculation of individual researchers. For those interested in research, being able to regularly move between the two worlds would provide them with both good compensation from the private sector and good reputations from universities. Being able to dabble in independent research projects, ultimately published in top academic journals, during free time while working in companies should be the first step to having this career mobility. Reducing the financial obstacles to dabble on the side will be needed.

To reduce the financial cost of publishing, academic journals need to behave more commercially, like magazines published by the private sector. Revenues should be less dependent on readers or authors paying up but on other sources of funding, whether they'd be through securing specific grants from commercial organizations keen to see research in their related fields, or even considering publishing advertisements for companies seeking to sell to academics. Only by allowing non-academics to do research on the side for cheap can there realistically be chances of some being turned into academics in the future.