The (financial) cost is not a side issue. With Elsevier bundling different journals together, the outrageous charges really hurt the libraries. The last time I recommended my library two books to purchase, they asked me to choose one since their budget was limited and the books seemed to be on similar topics and available via interlibray loan.
Being a scientist myself, I am in favor of open access, but I also think that affordable access is the next best thing. I am not compromising on this, if a publishing house that published low cost journals supported RWA, I would boycott them, too. There is no reason to be militant, though. Once open access becomes standard, people will demand it more easily. Note that one reason for Gowers's public declaration was to make this "socially acceptable". Unfortunately, it is not yet so.
Perhaps the whole landscape can be changed in one move, and we should shoot for the stars, but this has to be done by the scientists, and generally speaking they are busy doing science. An easier goal is much more realistic.
This being said, I would also like to add that I think there is an opportunity here for a startup. Just like PG et al's Viaweb, perhaps someone can come up with a store that allows a board of directors to leave a journal and setup shop easily?
Unfortunately I don't have access to an academic library since I graduated and went into industry. Even if you get the cost for libraries down to a reasonable amount, you are limiting access to scientific knowledge to <1% of the world's inhabitants. I hear that JSTOR is affordable, but they won't even sell individual subscriptions.
That's bullshit.
Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, academics in Biology and Machine Learning have revolted against pay journals and made their own authoritative, high-quality open access journals. The model has been proved. The path has been cleared. Now all you have to do is walk it.
> "but this has to be done by the scientists, and generally speaking they are busy doing science."
God forbid reshaping the scientific process to make use of the singular most important technology of the last 50 years take any time away from some scientist's work - which is mostly conservative, incremental and only useful for advancing his tenure application, anyways.
Being a scientist myself, I am in favor of open access, but I also think that affordable access is the next best thing. I am not compromising on this, if a publishing house that published low cost journals supported RWA, I would boycott them, too. There is no reason to be militant, though. Once open access becomes standard, people will demand it more easily. Note that one reason for Gowers's public declaration was to make this "socially acceptable". Unfortunately, it is not yet so.
Perhaps the whole landscape can be changed in one move, and we should shoot for the stars, but this has to be done by the scientists, and generally speaking they are busy doing science. An easier goal is much more realistic.
This being said, I would also like to add that I think there is an opportunity here for a startup. Just like PG et al's Viaweb, perhaps someone can come up with a store that allows a board of directors to leave a journal and setup shop easily?