It is with great trepidation that I disagree with Stevan Harnad... - Bill Hooker

agree - I think you're on the right track here. Bill, you absolutely must combine this lot together somewhere and get it published in one of those old things that have issues and dois, you remember them? Can't think of the name at the moment ;-) I hereby start the collection for any OA fees incurred.... - Cameron Neylon

What Doroth34 sez. I think it's a rite of passage for someone who's serious about OA, which you clearly are, and intent on pursuing it thoughtfully (which you clearly are). Good stuff. - Walt Crawford

Is there a really first-rate OA venue for articles about OA? That's a legitimate question. If so, that's where Bill should go... If not, should there be one? - Walt Crawford

I was thinking D-Lib, although now that you mention it, JEP might be an excellent venue. (I forget them sometimes; the gap in the publishing record didn't help.) - Walt Crawford

Honestly I'd go for Nature or PLoS Biology if they won't take it. Science have also published lots of stuff recently in this space. Exposure is the key IMHO and you get the best exposure in the big journals - Cameron Neylon from twhirl

How about First Monday: http://firstmonday.org/ ? - Bill Anderson from twhirl

Without getting into it, +5 for what Doroth34 just said. - Walt Crawford

I was sorta kidding about the trepidation. Prof Harnad was never the boogeyman -- at least not since I've been paying attention. He can be intimidating, by dint of sheer volume as well as erudition (and the word "relentless" does spring to mind) but I've never known him to be other than gracious and scrupulously honest. All his disagreements are good faith attempts to map the shortest possible route to 100% OA. - Bill Hooker

Had to think about this next bit for a while. I appreciate the "send this to a journal" strokes (that purring sound is my ego) but in fact I consider the stuff already published, since it's on the web. Peter Suber has linked to the useful bits, so I doubt that any other publication venue can increase the chances that anyone will find it who might actually use it. Not only that, but all of it is very bloggy -- rough around the edges. All the ideas and data are there for anyone who wants them though, and honestly I can't be arsed to polish it up and squeeze it into some kind of "narrative" just to match the usual journal format. - Bill Hooker

Note that all my stuff is Public Domain, so anyone who disagrees with me (about no increase in utility from publishing in a traditional venue) is free to publish it all themselves. You already own it. :-) - Bill Hooker

That looks as though my PD comment was in response to D, but it wasn't. I sent my comments one after the other, not knowing that D's would land in between them. I know that folks around here wouldn't just grab my stuff and run with it, but I hope y'all also know that I'm entirely serious when I say that I wouldn't mind if you did. - Bill Hooker

Hmmm. D, the "people who hate blogs" argument is a strong one. Reconsidering. - Bill Hooker

Bill, absolutely agree with the "it's already published argument" but getting this stuff in front of people who aren't online is crucial in my view. I have to say having recently done it that turning blog post into paper is a pain in the backside frankly - but I wouldn't have done it unless I thought it was worth the effort - the reasons I think it was worth it have nothing to do with "getting published" and everything to do with the paper being a means to an end. - Cameron Neylon

I agree with Cameron. Of course the stuff is already on the web, even ready for reuse, but that's not considered relevant by many, and reaching them is the short-term goal. The same applies for snippets made available by Peter Suber - everyone with even a remote interest in OA will know this venue, but this still represents a minority amongst scientists. - Daniel Mietchen

Bill, I have to go with "multiple venues to reach more people." When I almost stopped doing OA stuff in my own ezine because Peter Suber had already done it all, and better, he pointed out that I get hundreds (sometimes thousands) of readers who don't read SOAN. Similarly with the "journals vs. blogs" case--and with a constructed article as compared to a series of posts. Heck, I may base a Cites & Insights essay on your series (with attribution)--but there again, C&I is Not A Refereed Journal and therefore beneath contempt. - Walt Crawford

(1) I too think it was a good critique, Bill, and please add my vote that you should publish it. (Along with the other possible venues mentioned -- of which FM is not bad, actually -- you might consider Ariadne, or Wired. Posting it is good, but it is not nearly as effective as (also) publishing it.) --- (2) If you do a critique of Phil Davis's postings and publications, I suggest you choose as your target his papers trying to show there is no (or little) OA impact advantage. Those papers are fatally flawed methodologically and do not at all show what they purport to show, yet they have been cited and used to try to devalue OA (both Green and Gold). The studies' defects are so huge that it is a slam-dunk to expose them, but it needs to be done and it will be a service to OA if it can be done in such a way that everyone is forced to take notice. (My own critiques so far are ignored, but soon I will be reporting data that refute his.) --- I don't think there is any point in rebutting the other mischief Phil has done, because that's all just in the realm of opinion, it is non-substantive, and it does not arouse much notice except among publishers who are already none too thrilled about OA. --- The only exception is his Bentham sting, which I actually think was a good thing to do. The only thing that needs to be pointed out there is that the outcome would almost certainly have been the same if he had done the same sting on a low-grade non-OA journal (of which there are plenty!). So it almost certainly has nothing to do with Gold OA publication. The anti-OA spin he put on it is worth serenely exposing, perhaps in the context of the anti-OA spin he puts on his tests of the OA impact advantage, which suffer from exactly the same methodological flaw: he never bothers to do the control conditions that would show whether he has any effect at all! (The flaw is called the "confirmation bias.") - Stevan Harnad

OK, I give. :-) The argument is compelling and I am convinced. I think the most useful stuff is the update to the ARL serials-vs-CPI/HEPI curve, which I could send somewhere as-is(ish) but I think it would be better to scrape all the historical data from pdf to csv/spreadsheet and offer it back to Library Journal, with the updated CPI comparison as a hook. They're not OA so they "own" that data; I wonder if they'd make the article and data OA, either for money or warmfuzzies? - Bill Hooker

I guess the update to the Cornell library costs study could go somewhere -- I'd feel compelled to offer Phil co-authorship, which might be interesting in that the update turns the original conclusion on its head. Alternatively, that could be included in a combination "new OA vs TA numbers" together with the author-side fees stuff. The latter would need to be done right though, with a careful selection of journals and an adequate estimate of average page numbers/color figs. - Bill Hooker

Finally, I'm not at all sure where/how/if to publish the reply-to-Stevan that generated this whole discussion in the first place. Ideas and suggestions for that and for the data-centric articles are hereby solicited! - Bill Hooker