I am an ecologist but recently, I’ve been getting worked up over the issue of fairness. As far as I have been an academic, I could not understand why publicly funded research was not available freely to the public. Not only do journals that publish our data require subscriptions, most authors replied no when I asked for data. And this persisted despite the amazing advances in technology that facilitate sharing. As a publicly-funded scientist, I am convinced it is my duty to make my work publicly available. My outreach efforts, from hosting high school students for "A-day-of-a-scientist" tour to discussing my data with farmers at agricultural extension centers, have been to meet this end.