And before someone gets up in arms about the research papers, the researchers don’t get paid by the journals for publishing with them. In fact, the researchers need to pay the journal to publish, and then the journal turns around and charges people to read it.

What you're describing here is called predatory publishing and is not the norm. It's the "fake news" of scientific journals. I'm not "up in arms" about the original topic of making info available to the public whatsoever, just wanted to correct this part.

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