Thanks to the Office of the Vice-Principal, Research, the UTM Library presented a large display, “Sample Cost of Information” during Smarti Gras - A Celebration of Undergraduate Research on August 15, 2018. This is the web version of the display.
Original research requires a great amount of time and money. In addition to expenses (e.g., facilities, lab/field experiments, equipment), simply writing one research paper can cost more than we think. Researchers read a great number of papers and books and select the most relevant and valuable information to cite in the final product. Accessing each article in most cases carries a cost that often is covered by the institution's library. However, if a research doesn't have access to the work through a library, the cost of accessing even one article would fall on the researcher.
Let’s take a look at a paper below, written by Ian A. Renfrew (United Kingdom), G. W. K. Moore (Vice-Principal, Research and the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, UTM, Canada), Peter S. Guest (United States), and Karl Bumke (Germany). Look at References in the middle of the display. 45 sources (books, scholarly articles, and gray literature) are cited in this paper. You can find the cost of each cited material listed on the References on the display.
Hover over the image below to see the enlarged view.
