A whirlwind of emotion, flaming, and argument is presently sweeping across the Association of Internet Researchers discussion list, Air-List, about open access publishing, launched by danah boyd who posted a manifesto denouncing 'locked down' publishing policy by commercial publishers like Sage and, in her case, a recently published issue of Convergence. The issues are multiple and the hues in the posts anything but grey; black and white dominate the positions taken by the score of contributors to the debate. I personally have much sympathy with the principles of open source as applied to publishing, but have little patience with simplification of issues to the 'good' and the 'bad', the 'right' and the 'wrong', the 'evil' and the 'righteous', which is all too frequently taking place in this current whirlwind. Still, I am and I feel all of us in the seminar should examine the postings on the air-list and boyd's blog carefully because they reflect important principles about scholarship, knowledge, and access to both. Thanks to this whirlwind and to boyd's manifesto, we all have – again – opportunity to examine the issues and formulate a personal stance…which is my intent in the coming days.
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