Hi Steve I think we are in agreement here.
Perhaps one of the issues is that the open archives concept also exposes all of these millions of refereed articles to the public at large. Academics might find that the "Sokal Affair" was benign compared to a potential fire storm in a time of shrinking public support for post secondary education. What indeed would happen if the weight of decisions on promotion/tenure and pay were shifted towards teaching and measures of student satisfaction rather than peer review? Or articles that did not meet standards in one or more publications appear vetted by another source- what then? In essence, while OAI opens research for sharing, its potential to cause restructuring within The Academy is more than idle speculation or an intellectual exercise thoughts? tom abeles