From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:29:03 -0500

While the worldwide researcher community is again busy working itself
up into an indignant lather with yet another publisher boycott threat,
I am still haunted by a "keystroke koan":

"Why did 34,000 researchers sign a threat in 2000 to boycott their
journals unless those journals agreed to provide open access to their
articles - when the researchers themselves could provide open access
(OA) to their own articles by self-archiving them on their own
institutional websites?"

Not only has 100% OA been reachable through author self-archiving as
of at least 1994, but over 90% of all refereed journals (published by
65% of all refereed journal publishers) have already given their
explicit green light to some form of author self-archiving -- with
over 60% of all journals, including Elsevier's -- giving their authors
the green light to self-archive their refereed final drafts
("postprint") immediately upon acceptance for publication...

So why are researchers yet again boycotting instead of keystroking,
with yet another dozen years of needlessly lost research access and
impact already behind us?

We have met the enemy, Pogo, and it's not Elsevier...

http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/869-.html

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