The Internet has opened up a question about freedom of access of scholarly information. Before the Internet, scientists and scholars would have only one way of getting the research results and assimilation of knowledge out to people who were interested. That way was through publishers who managed peer reviews, edited, and published scholarly journal literature. With the arrival of the Internet, people began asking why should only those who have access to a subscription be the only ones who could benefit from the information. The scholars have offered the information freely for the "sake of inquiry and knowledge" and people should be able to access it freely (Budapest Open Access Initiative). Thomas Jefferson, ahead of his time, said, "ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe" (Unsworth). The internet is the first practical way to actually accomplish the task that Jefferson was talking about.

Benefits of the Internet include broadening readership, increasing the number of times publications are cited in other writings, and attracting more submissions and more reviewers. Some articles have been downloaded as many as 83,000 times in a few years compared to 5,000 readers over the 20-year shelf life of a journal. The Internet also allows linking to archives of past articles; one journal has archived 100 years of publishing. The speed of an article's arrival on the Internet is often many times faster than it's print counterpart. (Viiadero) Moving of print to the public depends on physical demands of printing time, binding, packing, and shipping. Information placed on the internet is mere minutes from the completion of the writing.

The ideal of open access is easy to agree to in principle, but the real question is the economics of the issue, and how to make that work. (Butler p.554) Someone must pay the cost, either the author or the university, institute, or agency that funded the work. In 2000 the Public Library of Science (PloS) requested that free access be given, to the content of journals, by scientific publishers within the first months. (Nature) But some societies argue that they may not survive financially if required to provide open access. (Guterman) In my opinion is that authors should be compensated for their labor, but journal owners do not need to make huge profits. Neither to online information providers need to make an outrageous profit. Libraries have been forced in recent years to use more and more of their budget to provide print journals and online journals to their patrons. In research libraries the cost of a subscription can be in the thousands of dollars to some types of journals.

We quickly realize that what has been freely given is costly in the form of salaries of those who organize, printing costs, and distributing costs. So there are really two sides to this coin: the publishers and societies who are losing revenue, and those who desire academic knowledge to the public. The publishers provided a service for many long years. When the Internet arrived they were expected to publish online which brought in added costs because the more they published online the less they received in subscription funds. If the publisher decided to go directly online they still had 75% of the expense as the paper version. Therefore they were forced to charge access fees to the online journals. Publishers contend that for there to be no access fees, then those that grant awards for research should change their funding structures to include money for publication. This means convincing congress to increase the agency's budgets to allow for the publication costs. (O'Grady)

Some people have banded together and are creating online journals with no subscription fees. These people want to help save libraries from paying very expensive subscriptions. Libraries have been forced by budget constraints to cut journal titles or to use funds they would normally spend on books to counteract the ever rising journal costs. Some educational authors have decided not to submit to companies that won't go online or that charge too high a price for access. (Guterman)

There is no doubt that online access is better for those who desire the information. Statistics prove that people use online resources. Plos Biology had 500,000 hits in it's first eight hours online (Guterman). But another thing to be considered is do we really want all journals to just be online? I think that we don't because first of all people don't always have access to a computer either because of location or cost. Secondly the convenience of holding the print in your hand is still appealing to most people in some circumstances. Yes we are becoming a computerized world but not everyone has access and people do not want to spend all their time on the computer. When the telephone came along, did that replace talking in person? When the television came along did it replace the radio? Neither will the computer in my opinion ever replace print. Enhancements are simple added to our lives by technology.

Some compromises are currently being considered. Some journals are "allowing authors to pay for open online access for individual papers, while retaining a subscription model for the journal as a whole" (Butler). Some publishers are offering an institutional flat fee per year instead of paying per paper published. Others are advocating that scientists create online archives of their publications. Still others say that institutions should start archiving everything that one of their employees or departments publishes. This would be the fastest way to give access, but the disadvantage is that it would not be peer reviewed. (Guterman)

The sharing of information does not need to be a game of greed in my opinion. I applaud those who are trying to get information out to as many people as possible and the lowest cost possible without cheating those who have invested their money and time.