The long slog: OA baby steps, great leaps forward, and two steps back

As someone mostly new to the discussion and work of open access, I find some of the most interesting aspects of the ongoing public discourse are the attempts by various players to discredit open access efforts through grandstanding (especially by various publishers) or via publicity stunts such as the recent “sting” operation by John Bohannon in Science Magazine, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full.

It strikes me that striving for open access sometimes feels like a David vs. Goliath battle. In this period of upheaval in the slowly changing system of scholarly communication, with its hard-to-fathom, lop-sided economic model, combined with the OA movement’s uphill battle for recognition, understanding, support, and implementation; while there are, and will continue to be nay-sayers and doom-sayers, the only way we will get to a workable, sustainable, affordable scholarly communication system that supports research and the growth of knowledge, is by taking baby steps. Through these baby steps, like making sure we respond thoughtfully to stunts, as many in our movement have done (see links below), we will eventually make great leaps forward (like the creation in 2011 of COAPI, the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions, as a resource for others looking to pass OA policies at their institutions), yet we must acknowledge that occasionally, we will take two steps back. I, for one, am in it for the long slog.

To read more from the OA community and others are saying about John Bohannon’s Science piece:

Peter Suber – New “sting” of weak open-access journals Heather Joseph – Science Magazine’s Open Access “Sting” SV-POW blog – John Bohannon’s peer review against science The Guardian – Hundreds of open access journals accept fake science paper