Well said, Ingbert. "Academic publishing" is not one monolithic regime. It's not even two regimes (ie open and not). Publishing experiences of an interdisciplinary researcher of online communities are different from those of a mathematician, a biomedical researcher or a communications researcher (for example) in at least a few ways that seem significant here. One of the more critical differences when comparing disciplines: review criteria. In interdisciplinary fields that draw from a variety of literatures and epistemological traditions, review is a more strenuous burden on the community than in fields with an accepted canon and methodological repertoire. The cost of participation is higher. Another critical difference: Some disciplines are currently more dependent than others on for-profit organizations. It's actually not all large, profit-hungry corporations eating our intellectual progeny for dinner. A great deal of the literature I read coming out of computer science and/or engineering is produced by non-profit professional associations. Individuals invest heavily in sustaining these organizations for the good of their academic communities (and, yes, to establish themselves within those communities). There are already a number of alternate models out there for academic publication. Viva open access for sure, but defining responsible/good/ positive/humanitarian/effective/insert-value-laden-adjective-here publishing using the line between "free" and "not-free" is perhaps too coarse a distinction. Andrea