Editorial

108

Last year, in the July issue of this journal, I 
wrote an editorial entitled “Walk the Talk: 
Open Access and Academic Libraries” in 
which I commented on some of the recent 
research we had published on the topic of 
open access practices in the literature of 
librarianship. Not all the findings were 
encouraging, and I urged our profession 
to better “walk the talk” of open access in 
our own scholarly practices. I described 
our journal, College & Research Libraries, as 
good but not perfect when it came to open 
access. Lo and behold, the editorial had 
an effect, for starting next issue, College 
& Research Libraries will lift its six-month 
embargo on recently published online 
articles and become a fully open access 
journal. This is a real step forward in 
practice and in setting an example of the 
value of open access in scholarly com-
munications.

I would like to give all the credit to my 
editorial persuasiveness, but in reality the 
move to full open access took the time 
and effort of many advocates in the As-
sociation of College and Research Librar-
ies (ACRL), which is also the publisher 
of this journal. It was interesting being 
caught in the middle of this discussion 
and debate about going open access, 
with concerns about the hard reality of 
economic viability weighing in against 
the growing acceptance of open access to 
scholarship as a high professional value. 
With paid subscribers and advertisers in 
slow but steady decline (a common situ-
ation for many scholarly journals), would 
open access exacerbate these negative 
financial trends for College & Research 
Libraries? Why pay for a journal when 
you can get it free online? These hard 
questions made me more sympathetic to 
the difficult decisions editors, publishers, 
scholarly societies, and professional asso-

College & Research Libraries Goes 
Fully Open Access

ciations in many disciplines 
must face when considering 
open access for their publica-
tions. In spite of economic 
uncertainty, I am pleased that ACRL has 
endorsed full open access in practice for 
its primary research journal. The intel-
lectual value of open access, I believe, 
justifies its cost. Now the content of our 
journal will be freely available online to 
all around the world. 

Those of us involved in the produc-
tion of College & Research Libraries ap-
plaud its move to open access, but we 
are well aware of the financial challenges 
we face with our scholarly journal. 
Even with volunteer efforts of editorial 
staff and referees, there are costs for 
production, distribution, and adminis-
tration of the print and online versions 
of the journal that in our case amount 
to more than one hundred thousand 
dollars annually. Paid subscribers and 
advertising revenue once covered and 
exceeded these costs, but over the last 
decade, revenues have declined and are 
now below expenditure costs. Someone 
must pay the cost. If not subscribers, 
then others associated with the journal. 
In our case, it will likely mean added 
cost to and support from ACRL, which 
in turns depends on your membership 
support. In the coming year we will be 
looking carefully at our production costs 
and distribution models, particularly at 
the cost of continuing the print edition 
of the journal. We will do what we can 
to prudently reduce and control costs, 
while we continue to bring you the high-
est quality research journal in academic 
librarianship.

I thank ACRL for its support of the 
value and the costs involved in moving 
College & Research Libraries to full open 



access. On January 10, 2011, the ACRL 
Board of Directors unanimously passed 
the following resolution:

Whereas ACRL supports open scholar-
ship and access to scholarly work;

Whereas ACRL publishes C&RL, 
the premier journal for academic li-
brarians;

Whereas ACRL has made successive 
changes to increase access to the research 
found in C&RL;

Whereas ACRL member groups sup-
port making C&RL an open access journal;

Be it resolved, that ACRL provide open 
access to the electronic version of College 
& Research Libraries journal as of April 
2011; and,

Be it further resolved, that ACRL, 
through this action, continues to play a 
leading role in advocating for new models 
of scholarly communication in all of the 
disciplines.

Joseph Branin, Editor

Editorial  109

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