[viewfromafar]

I understood the criticism directed at the value of papers as instruments of knowledge sharing. The argument is not that papers are completely useless in terms of knowledge sharing but that this pure purpose of dissemination is largely overshadowed by considerations of carreer, prestige, funding or any interest other than knowledge sharing.

This is the world we live in. A scientist is a person that needs to make a living and is subject to various constraints.

The reason that there is little money to be made is that society hasn't found a way to set up the scientific process in such a way that the constraints would value the increase in public domain knowledge higher than the incentives to hold some knowledge back.

Part of this may stem from leaving specialized knowledge to academia while letting only companies reap the monetary rewards of putting the knowledge to use. Society benefits only indirectly (better drugs, machines, etc) but industry players will rather shield knowledge and adapt its representation to their own needs.