There are currently three concepts inventories in the JCE collection at http://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/QBank/collection/CCInventory/index.html. The CCI was published in 1998 and the other two were published in 2006.
As far as I know the authors of these concept inventories either wanted to or agreed to make them available as supplemental material, which meant they would be available to JCE subscribers. Since many universities have IP-number subscriptions, this means that the inventories are effectively available to students and the general public.
If the community wants either the questions and answers or just the answers to these inventories hidden from view, we can do that. Answers to QBank questions in the JCE Digital Library (http://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/QBank/index.html) are hidden, but the questions are only partly hidden. (In much of the QBank collection there are from six to 20 questions of the same format and content, and only one of them is available to the public. The other 5 to 19 questions and the answers are hidden.) At present there is a requirement for verification of identity as a teacher in order to download large collections of questions and answers to any of the questions. To defray the cost of carrying out verification of identity and to deter casual requests from students or others, there is a fee of $20 for a download license good for a year.
The community and particularly the authors of the concept inventories in the JCE collections should decide what course ought to be followed. I can contact the authors directly, but I would also like feedback from the community as a whole. Rather than requesting email responses, I suggest that you enter your comments below. I will come back in a week to see what everyone thinks.
John Moore is editor of the Journal of Chemical Education and Principal Investigator of the Journal of Chemical Education Digital Library
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As the co-author of one of the inventories (the Chemical Concepts Inventory) I wanted to add a quick comment. Bill Robinson (the other co-author) and I have had the chance to talk about this issue and we decided that as one of our major goals for the CCI was for all teachers to have easy access so that they could use the inventory in their own classes for programmatic evaluation and even more importantly to convince them that conceptual learning was not happening with traditional teaching. I just don’t think that students are spending time on the JCE website such that they would find the test. Though a few may find it I think that open access serves the teachers and the chemical education community better.
It has also been pointed out by Bill Robinson in a private communication to me that the ACS Division of Chemical Education Examinations Institute has available conceptual examinations that are secure and are expected to remain secure. Therefore there need be no concern that the Chemical Concepts Inventory might be seen by a few students. I agree with Doug Mulford that the number is not likely to be large.