Open but not free--publishing in the 21st century.

787 Research culture is far from monolithic. Systems that underpin scholarly communication will migrate to open access by fits and starts as discipline-appropriate options emerge. Meanwhile, experiments will be run, start-ups will flourish or perish, and new communication tools will emerge, because, as the Bethesda Open Access Statement puts it, “an old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the worldwide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.” There is no doubt that the public interests vested in funding agencies, universities, libraries, and authors, together with the power and reach of the Internet, have created a compelling and necessary momentum for open access. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be inexpensive, but it is only a matter of time. Disclosure forms provided by the author are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.