"Knowledge is Power"

In today's age many people are very technologically savvy. The internet today allows a majority of its' information to be readily looked at by any interested viewer. Scholarly articles, however, do not fall under the category of free. I believe that scholarly research should be available to everyone that is seeking knowledge because that is what allows our country to grow intellectually. Researchers who write scholarly articles do not do so because of the great money they receive, or there lack of, but rather for the credibility it will bring to their name. On the other hand many scholarly research websites charge a large fee (estimate $25,000 by Kevin Seeber) users to look at these types of scholarly articles. I feel that if someone is interested enough to look up a topic such as "Correlations Between Death and Smoking" then information should be readily available. This person looking this information up could be thinking about stopping smoking but just want some solid research behind why smoking is bad for you. In the article Priced To Sell I think that this point about prices is an example of why wikis are used so much "price difference between the two chocolates was exactly the same, but that magic word “free” has the power to create a consumer stampede." Wikis are excellent to get information but the ability for people to edit whatever they feel ruins the credibility. The cost to look up simple medical facts on Wikipedia is $0, where it would cost a college student to see such facts in a research paper is basically the cost of their tuition for that semester. If there was a scholarly website identical to JSTOR but was free I believe that more people would find valuable and reliable information. The cost for such academic journals is ridiculous and the fact that it is part of many classes cirriculum to cite such sources is a little extreme. A technological utopian not just for students but for the public would be the ability to find an article that has facts and research behind it without spending a cent for the valuable information. Just maybe if such educated information was available to the public the United States would be able to educate more people for free, causing a widespread effect of the overall thought that education and knowledge is a free right to everyone not just people with thousands of dollars to blow.