It’s no wonder no one wants to read anymore. It’s gotten too expensive.

I balk when I go into the local Borders or B&N and pick up paperbacks priced at $16.95. That used to be the price of a new-release hardback with glossy cover and photo inserts and now it barely buys you the latest bubblegum-pink chick lit bound in cardstock. Over the last few years, I tacitly adopted an unofficial policy to only buy books new if I could get the “3 for 2” deal or something similar. eBay has become an even dearer friend.

But the scandalous costliness of so-called “discount” booksellers pales in comparison to what I found today: The Great American Journal Rip-Off. Search engines like PubMed and Google Scholar entice innocent researchers (like me) with scads of “relevant matches” to their queries, and then drop the bomb when we actually want to READ what has been written. Does anyone think we might actually rest easier just knowing that research is out there? It’s a dirty rotten trick, I tell you.

I’m currently putting together some research to write an article about the impact of the parenting practices of the 1980s on the career motivations of Generation Y – particularly in regard to their choices to both enter the nursing profession and break through the proverbial “glass ceiling” that limited the career development of Gen X and the Baby Boomer nurses. You’re on the edge of your seat, I know.

Anyway, in the course of my research I found the abstract of an article in the Journal of Nursing Administration that addressed the generational divide in nursing – the first one I had come across one the topic. Yet in order to actually read the article, I either have to purchase an 11-month subscription for more than a hundred bucks or pay $19.99 for a 24-hour “viewing period” in which I can look at the article but apparently not save a copy. I wonder if I can print or if the copyright gremlins have somehow disabled that function as well. But that’s beside the point. The article is four pages long. FOUR PAGES for twenty bucks. If you break down the subscription cost, I could buy two whole issues for that price, and they want it for four freaking pages. It makes Borders seem like a bargain.

And irony of it is that none of the article authors would see a dime of my twenty bucks. When I plunk down an obscene sum for the newest Nick Hornby novel, it warms my heart a teeny bit to know that at least a few quid will find their way from the cash register into Nick Hornby’s pocket. After all, he did the work, so it makes sense he should reap the reward. But people who write for peer-reviewed journals apparently get the shaft. It does NOT cost ten bucks to print each issue of JONA, yet that’s what they charge subscribers. I know it probably doesn’t cost $3.95 to print Us Weekly either, but it is one thing to rip off the tabloid-hungry groundlings. It is quite another to charge exorbitant fees for access to research.

In this case, I was in luck. I sent out an email to several of my bosses and clinical nurse specialists, asking if anyone had a subscription. Candace emailed me back and said she didn’t, but to check with Coreen. Coreen is out of town so I asked her assistant Diane who just had lunch with the Retention Chairwoman who does in fact have a subscription and will send me the file electronically. Crisis averted. But it’s silly, isn’t it? This article and so many like it are online – there’s no overhead, no printing and assembly costs to recoup, yet people are probably shelling out twenty smackers (and more!) for four pages that they have to print on their own machines. What’s the point of doing research if no one can afford to appreciate it?

Shabbat Shalom. I’m going to go spend the twenty bucks I saved on some new shoes. It’s blister research.

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Today I Feel: antsy
Now Playing: “Why, Georgia?”
John Mayer, Room For Squares