We might like to think that information-sharing is intrinsic to academic work, especially academic work that is publicly funded. However we also place many restrictions on publishing, like peer review, and I imagine there are still academics who try to keep their work secret until it is ready for any number of semi-paranoid reasons. I'm not going to say we shouldn't do these things, but we need to recognize that the discipline works by controlling the production and distribution of disciplinary knowledge.
See Skirky Coasean floor- the cost of dissemintation of academic research has dropped to near zero. When institutions insist on exhorbitant journal access fees they doom themselves to irrelevance. Attention economy needs eyeballs and the eyeballs glaze over at the idea of paying $180.00 for a PDF report on online education in Canada, a publicly funded research project.(295 for the hard copy)