Open and Shut?: The Subversive Proposal at 20

Twenty years ago yesterday, cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad posted a message  on a mailing list, a message he headed “A Subversive Proposal”. This called on all researchers to make copies of the papers they published in scholarly journals freely available on the Internet 

    The message sparked a protracted discussion, and eventually led to the publication of a book called Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing. Today the Subversive Proposal is viewed as one of the seminal texts of the open access movement. 

     To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Subversive Proposal, I emailed Harnad nine questions yesterday. These questions are published below, with Harnad’s answers appended.