Though Harvard University says Science Online offers "full and timely content," these cost-based decisions made by universities concern the leaders of the Public Library of Science.
Brown, at Stanford, said it is unlikely such library decisions will have any significant effect on the price of the most prestigious scientific journals, since scientist demand the peer-review process that these journals provide.
Kirschner said the only effective way to insure that scientists have inexpensive access to the most respected sources of information is through the Public Library of Science's campaign.
"Because the scientists provide 99 percent of the raw materials that are actually involved in the journal publication process, they really do have a huge amount of power in the free market," Kirschner said. "The one thing they have lacked is the ability to act in a concerted way to make their wants heard and taken seriously."
The campaign seems to be provoking some response from the publishing world, Stanford Professor Patrick Brown said. And he says the scheduled boycott on publishing might not occur if journals continue to respond.
"We don't want to cripple the whole process, " Brown said. "We are now seeing some response and with these small concessions we are reconsidering what position we should take."
The Reaction
Some journals see the rationale for free access to archives but do not want to be part of the fully-searchable web engine, which as of now would be run off of a U.S. government site through the National Library of Medicine.
According to the managing editor of the Journal of Cell Biology, the magazine is not averse to allowing free content through its website but does not want to be searchable through Pub-Med central.
"We have made our content free after six months on our own website but we don't want to give the content to the proposed government site," Michael Rossner, Managing Editor of the Journal of Cell Biology said.
Science Magazine has also published manifestos against the proposed government site, though it too has granted free access to back issues six months after their publication date.
However, Kirschner said the resistance to a government-run search engine was unfounded. There would be no direct oversight of journal content, and the search engine would simply be based around an already well-known scientific resource, Pub-Med Central.
"Basically the response has been to characterize this as a 'Do you trust the government with running this repository?'" Kirschner said. "We are not saying [journals] can't have their separate sites, but that their information be connected to the National Library of Medicine."
Kirschner, Brown and others are drafting a response to the latest Science Magazine editorial against the search engine but they note that many journals have moved more content online, proving their point that journals will not be hurt by free archival access.
"Making information available for free to the world should not undermine a journal's economic integrity," Kirschner said.