Thatcher vs. Harnad

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I have been following the recent (ongoing?) debate between Sandy 
Thatcher and Stevan Harnad, but it does seem to me that the world 
has already moved beyond the terms of the argument.  Thatcher 
gets it mostly right and Harnad mostly wrong, but there are 
enough other people determined to get it wrong as well, thus 
boosting the Harnadian platform by acclamation.  As I have 
remarked before on this list (though I misspelled it), open 
access is a fait accompli.  Arguments in favor of it, however 
false, misleading, or intellectually dishonest, carry the day 
with the proven strategy of saying the same thing over and over 
in a louder and louder voice.

Please test the hypothesis:  take any highly-cited article six 
months after formal publication; Google for it using author's 
name and article title; and see if you can find it somewhere on 
the Web without access restrictions.  You may not find the 
article if you simply use keywords, as many OA articles are 
poorly designed for search-engine optimization.

The kids have had a great time tearing down the playhouse.  The 
responsibility of those who care about scholarly communications 
is to pick up the pieces and forge something new.  OA may be a 
huge policy error, but it has happened, and we would compound the 
error if we did not attempt to clean our nest now that it has 
been fouled.

Joe Esposito