When a project supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, or another government agency completes its work and reports the results of whatever study or research was done, the report ought to be free to everyone, right? The study made use of public monies, so shouldn't the public have free access to the information generated? Shouldn't instructional materials be subject to the same philosophy?

Recently there has been a strong movement toward making electronically published scientific information free to everyone, either immediately or after six months to a year. Applying this philosophy to JCE, one would argue that everything in JCE Online and JCE Software (or at least everything authored by those supported by the government or working at public institutions) should become available to anyone, not just subscribers, no more than a year after its publication. My problem with this philosophy is threefold: it ignores the costs of reviewing, editing, and enhancing materials prior to publication; it fails to consider the very real, ongoing costs of maintaining electronic dissemination; and it makes no provision for helping people to make effective use of that information. The effort required to ensure quality via peer review and to prepare and publish materials is better understood, so I will concentrate on the latter two issues.

To illustrate what is involved, consider a program called KC? Discoverer that JCE Software published in 1988. The program was distributed on two 5.25-in. floppy disks and ran under DOS on an IBM-compatible personal computer. The computer was interfaced with a video laserdisc called the Periodic Table Videodisc that enabled it to show images of each chemical element and videos of reactions of many elements with air, water, acid, and base on a separate video monitor. In the 1990s, KC? Discoverer was transformed into the Illustrated Periodic Table, which was distributed as compressed files on 13 high-density 3.5-in. disks. It had a mouse-driven interface and could display laserdisc video directly on the computer screen. It ran under Windows, had several new authors who contributed to the programming and data, and also included a significant investment of time on the part of JCE Software editors and programmers. Shortly thereafter analog video on the Periodic Table Videodisc was digitized to create the Periodic Table CD-ROM, making the video much easier to present via computer. By 1997 JCE Software editors had created Periodic Table Live!, which combined digitized video with the Illustrated Periodic Table program on a single CD-ROM. By 1999 the second edition of Periodic Table Live! had been reprogrammed by JCE Software staff to provide a Web-browser interface. Access via the Web made it much easier for large numbers of students to use the program anywhere anytime, but this transformation resulted in loss of the ability to graph and sort the data. Considerable work by a JCE Software programmer has been required to make graphing and sorting available later this year.

Information technology changes at such a rapid pace that there will always be significant differences between the capabilities of the latest hardware and system software and the corresponding versions of only a year or two ago. Two examples of this kind of problem are that when Windows began to supplant DOS, KC? Discoverer was prevented from running properly on many computers, and two years after the Periodic Table Videodisc was digitized, two "standard" programs became incompatible, preventing display of the videos. There is little incentive for the technology industry to build backward compatibility into their products, and often it is technically impossible to do so. Therefore, at any given time, specific technology-based materials will work for some people and not others. This means that a teacher using technology-based instructional materials requires technical support to keep the materials working. Someone has to keep an eye on what direction the industry is taking, find out how to solve the many problems that arise, and serve as a nexus to disseminate answers to technical questions. Usually the author of the materials is not willing to do this forever. Guaranteeing such a service requires a long-term commitment and entails long-term costs--responsibilities usually borne by the publisher of the material.

Without continual nurturing, technology-based materials can wither and die in a very short time. Over a period of a dozen years or so, KC? Discoverer has gone through three incarnations and the integrated video has also required significant updates. Because of rapid changes in technology and in electronic communication, earlier versions were rendered unusable for many when they purchased new computers. Many others were only able to use the software because they obtained trouble-shooting help from JCE Software staff. Without this continual support and regular updating, neither the first two versions of the program nor the original video would be usable today, and many of the features of the current version (such as Web delivery) would not be available. The original authors did some of this updating, but most of it was either carried out or coordinated by paid staff at JCE Software.

Good information and good technology-based instructional materials are not free. They require careful evaluation and upgrading prior to publication, continual effort to adjust them to constantly changing technologies, and ongoing technical support from knowledgeable people who can help users work around technical glitches. All of this should be done at the lowest possible cost, but it cannot be done for nothing. "Free" dissemination ignores real costs and threatens to undermine institutions such as JCE that provide necessary services at minimal cost. It is a bad idea.