As the people trying to turn David W. Lewis’ 2.5% Commitment paper into action, we appreciate this thoughtful critique. The collective action problem is real and overcoming it will be a challenge. The discussions here are useful in assessing the work to be done and how to do it.

This post also points out the apparent contradiction of libraries making a relatively small commitment because they can generally do this on their own while not taking on the more important challenge of creating a commitment from the larger community of scholars. We appreciate this critique, but would argue that libraries can and often have acted collaboratively to solve problems and that doing so now is an important step that should not be delayed. Work on building support in the broader academic community needs to be done in parallel.

The post correctly points out the importance of investment quality. This is a complicated problem that will need to be resolved. We believe the approach presented here is a start in doing so.

We also appreciate the notion that 2.5% is both too ambitious and not ambitious enough. In the end, the particular number is less important than action that leads to more funding for common infrastructure. There will inevitably come a time, and it will probably be sooner rather than later, that we will wish we had picked a different higher number, but for now it seems to us that the specific target is useful at least as a way of bringing attention to the idea.

We believe that independent of the long-term goal of enticing most libraries to invest more in open infrastructure, simply documenting the current set of investment opportunities and the amount of investment being made is useful simply to understand the current state of affairs. There is some urgency to moving quickly to an alternative model as non-Open actors are aggressively trying to create lock-in through creating an integrated walled garden approach to the entire scholarly communication lifecycle.

Our biggest complaint is with the title of the post. We don’t see it as being “againstâ€ what we are hoping to accomplish, rather we see it as advancing the conversation in useful ways.

If you want to keep up on the progress of the 2.5% Commitment see our website at http://scholarlycommons.net or follow us on Twitter at @in4open.

David W. Lewis
Lori Goetsch
Diane Graves
Mike Roy