Chemical Education Today
Letters
Does Information Want To Be Free? Responses to a Recent Editorial on Open Access to JCE’s Published Articles Editor’s Note Last November in an editorial titled, “Does Information Want To Be Free”, I asked whether readers wanted this Journal to provide them with the highest possible quality and pointed
out that “high quality information needs to cost something”. Responses that were sent directly to me appear below.
Publication Media and Differential Costs of Scientific Publishing
Costs Associated with Media
John Moore has raised an important issue in his November 2008 editorial (1), one that must be facing all publishers. I believe two aspects are crucial to the future of (at least) scientific publishing: addressing the cost of information and the cost of media. Costs Associated with Content It seems to me there are clear trade-offs to “free information”. On the positive side there will be more users. But the tradeoff is reliability and depth. Wikipedia is an example (2). While it is free and I will occasionally use it; at least in chemistry, it lacks depth and there are occasions when it contains errors. I don’t believe it can be used as final source of information. I believe it is a valuable asset, however, if I want something that will assist me in my teaching I would go to J. Chem. Educ. The point you make in one sentence concerning the crucial editing activities that the staff performs makes the difference between Wikipedia and J. Chem. Educ. (I recall an error in a paper I submitted to J. Chem. Educ. years ago which I recognized after submission and how impressed I was that a reviewer caught it.) I am sure the editorial staff catches similar but less technical problems. My point is that reliable, trustworthy information cannot be free.
Table1. Comparison of Publishing Costs for Collegiate Textbooks1 Textbook Publishing Cost Categories Publisher’s costs2 Marketing costs Publisher’s general and administrative Publisher’s income Author’s income College store personnel College store operations College store income Freight expense Total 1Data
from ref 3.
2This
Distribution of Actual Costs, %
Estimated Costs for Paper-Free Texts, %
32.3 15.4 10.0
16.15 15.4 10.0
7.1 11.6 11.3 6.6 4.5 1.2 100.0
7.1 11.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 60.25
includes paper, printing, and editorial costs.
The cost of the information should also reflect the medium. There should be a cost difference between information available in print and electronically. And I would extend that beyond journal publishers to textbooks as well. I share the pleasure of paging through printed copy without having to have a computer to do it—being able to flip back and forth between pages. But I also recognize that this is not the perspective of an increasing number of students and faculty. I recently went to a university chemistry library and was struck by how few current journals were on the shelves. There were no ACS journals, presumably because they are all online. I recall, as a graduate student, seeing faculty come into the library on a regular basis to look over the most current journals. Nowadays this is all done in your office on your computer. What has amazed me the most is how quickly students have taken on this approach. I believe that all college students now have access to computers—many with their own laptops—which makes paper-free media much more of a reality than I would have thought possible.1 While I believe information should not be free, I do believe that the cost of information should reflect the medium by which it is delivered. In 2004 a newspaper article (3) analyzed the cost categories for typical collegiate textbooks based on 2001–2002 fiscal data (Table 1). If half of the textbook publisher’s paper, printing, and editorial costs are paper-based (and I suspect it is more), paper-free publication of a textbook’s content would represent a 40% reduction in costs, so a $170 textbook would cost around $100 on a CD or DVD, with the publisher still making the same income as from the printed edition. In fact, electronic textbooks are considerably less than that. This cost reduction would affect college bookstores the most—they are already facing the problem. The impact of college textbooks’ costs on lower- and middle-income families has prompted a study by the Federal Committee on Student Financial Assistance assessing the problem and proposing an electronic media solution (4). I have no idea what these percentages (cost category breakdowns) are for the costs associated with publishing journals. But I would expect the last six cost categories to be zero, and thus the percentage cost of publishing in a paper medium would be higher. But there are probably other costs I am unaware of because, currently, the cost for the print version of the Journal of Chemical Education is the same as online. I recognize that for both journal and textbook publishers, movement to electronic media brings with it loss of control of
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 86 No. 9 September 2009 • Journal of Chemical Education
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Chemical Education Today
Letters distribution. Once a student has a CD textbook, anyone can copy it. Publishers have devised different approaches for access to .pdf, e-book, or other electronic formats to deal with the problem, yet more needs to be done for digital rights management. But there is also an environmental benefit of a paper-free medium. I estimated that for my class of 20 students, switching to electronic media would save about 100 pounds of paper, which could reverse the trend that computers have initiated. I recall that when academic computing first came on the scene in the 1960s this was projected to save enormous amounts of paper. Just the opposite happened. As a faculty member I could request repeated revisions of a paper or report until it was perfected, which would have been unthinkable with typewriters. Academic computing centers are having to deal with costs associated with increasingly large consumption of paper and ink. Perhaps paper-free journals and textbooks may reverse this trend. A question that occurred to me after submission of this letter (for which I have no answer) is a comparison of the energy consumed to create and use these two media. Conclusion My recommendation is for J. Chem. Educ. staff to continue to produce the reliable, quality publication it has in the past and assess charges that reflect the medium in which it is received. Note 1. This editorial touched on an issue that is much on my mind. After retiring I have undertaken writing an introductory chemistry textbook whose approach is so different that publishers initially rejected it citing that “Chemists are very conservative in their choice of textbooks, particularly if the decision is made by a committee”. Luckily I began it
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with computer readability as a possible use. What I had not expected was the phenomenal increase in student access to personal laptop and desktop computers. So I tried out a completed version the summer before last and last spring and it worked—paper free. Now I am about to see if publishers have had a change of heart.
Literature Cited 1. Moore, John W. J. Chem. Educ. 2008, 85, 1467. 2. Wikipedia Home Page. http://www.wikipedia.org/ (accessed Jul 2009). 3. Ellison, J. Price of Books in College Soars. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan 30, 2004. The article cited these primary sources (the data are from 2001–2002): Annual Survey of Colleges; The College Board; College Store Industry Financial Report; National Association of College Stores; and the Association of American Publishers. 4. Advisory Committee Report. http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/ list/acsfa/turnthepage.pdf (accessed Jul 2009). Frederick D. Tabbutt The author is a retired professor from The Evergreen State College Chemistry Department The Evergreen State College Olympia, WA 98505;
[email protected] Supporting JCE Online Material http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2009/Sep/abs1029_3.html Full text (HTML and PDF) with links to cited JCE article and URLs
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 86 No. 9 September 2009 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education
