OA: Accessibility, Affordability and Quality: Think It Through

Because of the Gaussian distribution of virtually all human qualities and quantities, research quality and quality-assessment is not just a 0/1, pass/fail matter. Research and researchers need the much more nuanced and informative hierarchy of quality levels that journals afford. It is short-sighted in the extreme to wish authors to renounce journals of established quality and pay extra pre-emptively to new Gold OA journals for an OA that they can already provide cost-free today through Green OA self-archiving, with the additional prospect of easing the affordability problem now, as well as preparing the road for an eventual liberation from subscriptions and a leveraged transition to affordable, sustainable Gold (and Libre) OA.