Re: The Green and Gold Roads

["Dr. James J. O'Donnell" <provost@georgetown.edu>]

This passage caught my eye:

> Yes, it will be a world in which the traditional journal still exists.
> Only one change is necessary: The full digital texts of all 2,500,000
> articles published yearly in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals
> must be immediately and permanently accessible online toll-free, i.e.,
> they must be Open Access (OA).

I am perhaps arithmetically challenged, but I do not quite see how
changing the behavior of 100% of the authors of 2.5M articles in 24K
journals counts as *one* change.

All of this back-and-forth makes me wonder if a couple of the altercators
might not prefer to step outside and settle this at
http://www.longbets.org -- That website, connected to the Long Now
Foundation, facilitates betting in the public interest on socially
important issues with long lead times to resolution.  Find somebody who
disagrees with you, negotiate and place your bet and put down your money
and it is immediately a tax-deductible contribution to the foundation.
When the specified time (min. 2 years) elapses and the bet is resolved,
Long Bets pays the winning amount to the charity specified by the winning
bettor.  This would be a way for a couple of folks to get specific about
their disagreement and make a prediction that most of us could be around
to evaluate in, say, 5 years.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown University