[originaltext] Good morning, everyone. Today, I’ll talk about why academic r

Good morning, everyone. Today, I’ll talk about why academic research isn’t publicly available since it’s publicly funded.
    To understand why scholars aren’t engaging with popular media, you first have to understand how universities work. In all of these different institutions, the research and publication process works the same way.
    First, scholars produce research in their fields. To fund their research, they apply for public and private grants and after the research is finished, they write a paper about their findings. Then they submit that paper to relevant academic journals. Then it goes through a process called peer review, which essentially means that other experts are checking it for accuracy and credibility. And then, once it’s published, for-profit companies resell that information back to universities and public libraries through journal and database subscriptions.
    And you can see how this might create some problems. The first problem is that most academic research is publicly funded but privately distributed. Every year, the federal government spends 60 billion dollars on research. According to the National Science Foundation, 29 percent of that goes to public research universities. So, if you’re quick at math, that’s 17.4 billion dollars. Tax dollars. And just five corporations are responsible for distributing most publicly funded research. In 2014, just one of those companies made 1.5 billion dollars in profit.
    And the other major problem is that most academics don’t have a whole lot of incentive to publish outside of these prestigious subscription-based journals. Universities build their tenure and promotion systems around the number of times scholars publish. But academics are not rewarded for publishing with popular media.
So, this is the status quo. The current academic ecosystem. But I don’t think it has to be this way. We can make some simple changes to flip the script.
    So, first, let’s start by discussing access. Universities can begin to challenge the status quo by rewarding scholars for publishing not just in these subscription-based journals but in open-access journals as well as on popular media. But access isn’t just about being able to get your hands on a document or a study. It’s also about making sure that document or study is easily understood.
    So, let’s talk about translation. I’m not suggesting a dumbing-down of the research. I’m just suggesting that we give the public access to that research and that we shift the venue and focus on using plain language so that the public who’s paying for the research can also consume it.
    Question 22. What do we learn about the regular research and publication process?
    Question 23. What does the speaker say about the first problem?
    Question 24. Why do most academics publish their papers on prestigious subscription-based journals instead of popular media?
    Question 25. What is the speaker’s suggestion for changing the current academic ecosystem?