Letters.(Letter to the editor)

Byline: Mark Chiillingworth

' Letter

OA accepts the challenge

I applaud your piece in February's IWR and would like to accept your invitation to make the case for open access (OA). I hope at least one publisher representative also accepts.

One of my complaints is that publishers tend to attack straw men, not the policy proposals or the actual arguments made by OA advocates.

I hope you could find some way to let each contributor read the other's piece and then revise their own to answer it. Of course, this gets messy and iterative, since each wave of revision will strengthen weak arguments, add nuance, and make the other party's criticism suddenly less relevant or effective. It also leads each contributor to want yet another iteration to see what new objections are in need of answers -- and to want double or triple the ...