However, a single standalone title cannot realize the economies of scale that can be found in a portfolio of journals hosted from the same platform, such as the ACS Journals or large commercial operations such as ScienceDirect or SpringerLink. It’s nice that there are still some truly “independent” journals like JCE out there, but they are economically doomed in the long run. That’s why many small publishers and non-profits, including some other ACS divisions, have been forced to sell themselves via contract to commercial platforms. The benefit is better financial footing and a wider audience that comes from the marketing clout of those platforms. The downside is substantially higher prices for subscribers.

If JCE ultimately decides to join the ACS Publications fold, that’s certainly better than going to Elsevier or Wiley. But it means no OA, ever. ACS brass remain implacably opposed to any form of open access. (Discounting the disingenous window dressing they call “Author Choice”.) It will mean sharply higher prices, and probably a smaller audience of subscribers since many smaller institutions will not be able to follow.

I would hope that JCE would investigate other OA platforms and business models before making that jump. There are plenty of small journals that have successfully planted themselves in OA publishing and done fine without charging subscription fees. They are exceptions, but they’re out there. And your audience of readers would be much larger.

And you should forget about print — today’s students and younger faculty don’t care about print anymore, and there’s no reason to bother with its costs in the OA environment. Many libraries don’t bother with print anymore either, when there is an option not to.

Three arguments:
1. While I understand that the US government is fickle and the NIH supports little of the content in JCE, the political argument of common pay (via taxes) for common knowledge (through open access) remains difficult to refute. Ideally, NSF and DOE would have the same policies as the NIH, and JCE would be affected to a greater extent.

2. Leveling the research/teaching playing field for the resource-poor colleges and universities. I teach at a small undergraduate-focused college. Our library budget cannot afford print or online subscriptions to enough journals to allow our faculty a competitive foothold in their disciplines. Free content is good for our faculty, and good for our students. More US students today are attending community colleges and smaller colleges, where access is limited by small library budgets; if we want ’science for all’, we need to support open access initiatives. This argument extends overseas to resource-limited research environments in the developing world as well.

3. Environmental resource usage - that’s a lot of trees to slash and burn, and a lot of gallons of gas used in getting those paper copies delivered. I know the costs are more than just the materials and postage, but I’m guessing that’s a good proportion of the costs. (What proportion is it?)

Keep up the good work.