Too bad this scientists didn't somewhat "hide" these findings - now someone may find a solution before they do and claim the title of finding a "new" hydrogen storage method.
Well, if they would not publihed these results, chances are nobody will ever know it makes sense to work on the problem. And they already established their precedence by publishing the paper.
Besides, if they were founded by the public money they usually HAVE to publish their results. Those founded by private money (for example in industrial research labs) quite often are required to NOT to publish their results. That often means that their work has to be repeated by others, which is a waste of time and resources.