Everyone wants more for less. That’s human nature, but it’s not necessarily a good long-term strategy for human society, especially when there are unanticipated, unintended negative consequences. Everyone would like lower electric bills, for example, but most of us paying the lower bills will not have to pay the full costs of global warming, many of which will accrue largely to future generations.

I think there are likely to be unintended negative (as well as many positive) consequences during the transition of journals (such as this one) from the era of print publication to the new paradigm of online-only publication. A recent report from the Association of Research Libraries presages this inevitable change (1). An important and accelerating shift is occurring in major research libraries from print to online holdings, as shown in the pie charts (2). Publishers, librarians, and users of academic journals all want the convenience of online access to journal articles, many expect economies to result when it is no longer necessary to print and mail large numbers of journal issues, and some argue that because it is easy to transmit information via the internet, the contents of journals should be freely available for everyone. It is important to consider what this inevitable shift will mean for the readers, authors, reviewers, and editorial staff of the JCE.

This Journal, like most others, is under considerable pressure to make all of its content freely available on the Internet. This is referred to as “open access”. Before its recess at the end of 2007, the U.S. Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill. President Bush signed it into law on December 26. The bill includes a requirement that NIH-funded researchers submit electronic copies of their manuscripts to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. The manuscripts are to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after publication. To implement this mandate, the NIH is requiring its grantees and their institutions to submit the final peer-reviewed manuscript, including all graphics and supplemental materials, for any paper accepted on or after April 7, 2008. Also, “Institutions and investigators are responsible for ensuring that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning submitted articles fully comply with this Policy” (3). Clearly this Journal and many others will have to revise their copyright transfer agreements, even if there are only one or two NIH-supported manuscripts per year (as is the case for the JCE). This will require a change in our recently adopted policy of making articles published in 2008 and subsequently freely available after a two-year period (4).

Proponents of open access say that because the research was publicly funded, it should be made available free to everyone. This ignores the considerable value added through the peer review and publication process, which is not being paid for by the government. If submissions are not evaluated, culled, clarified, and edited, then they likely will be self-published at a much lower level of quality Open access also ignores the differences among journals. Some publish only the latest, cutting-edge research. Papers in such journals must be read immediately by active researchers in the field. Their value decreases rapidly with a half-life on the order of weeks or months. Other journals, such as this one, publish materials that continue to be useful and valuable decades after their publication. Someone planning to revitalize a laboratory program a ten years from now will find that laboratory experiments published in this issue, in issues from decades ago, and from issues yet to come are all valuable. In addition there is considerable value added by Project Chemlab, whose members vet each experiment, assign keywords from a special, laboratory-oriented vocabulary, and have annotated every laboratory experiment published in the JCE since the 1960s. All of this effort is organized by dedicated members of our editorial staff whose salaries are paid by the subscription fees you, your colleagues, and institutional subscribers pay.

Broadening access to published research and to other published materials is a great idea. It is for exactly that reason that individual subscriptions to the JCE are priced at only $45 per year (and have been for over a decade-so their value increases annually). It is also the reason that we have set up a tiered structure for institutional subscriptions: smaller institutions with fewer users and less financial resources pay less. And it is why we have kept subscription prices low-lower than almost any other journal on a per-page basis. Debasing the value of a resource such as the JCE by making access entirely free is a bad idea. What you and your institution pay as subscribers is what makes possible all the things our editorial staff and our many volunteers (reviewers, column editors, demonstration testers, Chemlab annotators, and others) do to maintain the high quality of the JCE, both in print and online. Let’s not forget what keeps that quality coming every month.

Literature Cited

1. Johnson, Richard K.; Luther, Judy The E-only Tipping Point for Journals: What’s Ahead in the Print-to Electronic Transition Zone Association of Research Libraries: Washington, CD, 2007 (see http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/Electronic_Transition.pdf, accessed March 2008).

2. Prabha, Chandra. Serials Review 2007, 33, 4-13.

3. See http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ (accessed March 2008).

4. JCE editorial staff, J. Chem. Educ. 2008, 85, 36.

Open Access gains attention in scholar communic…