Getting picky about the new ACS agreement

"The hype from ACS is that their new contract “expands author rights and clarifies author responsibilities.” The reality is that ACS authors will continue to be behind the curve in scholarly communications under this agreement....This new ACS agreement clearly indicates a desire to stave off open access and to control it in a way that does not threaten the traditional thinking in scholarly publishing. But as our faculty editor indicated yesterday, this traditional thinking is no longer good enough. In her field, she told us, open access journals are arising that pose serious competition to the more traditional journals that she is responsible for. She is already afraid that these OA journals will grow in success and that her journals, with their very limited OA options, will suffer. The same fear ought to grip the ACS. Sooner or later chemists will find new ways to disseminate their research, just as other scientists have already done, and ACS journals will, without further change, begin to decline. OA is a proven benefit to scientific research, and this attempt by ACS to grasp and control it so tightly might just backfire."