Open access - free as in gratis or free as in libre

In my post yesterday, I referred to the distinction between free and libre in academic open access publishing, and the four freedoms of the open source software movement.

Today I  came across an open access model for publishing that is much closer to the libre model than the invitation I turned down.

http://www.sympoze.com/ is a website that aims to set up open access publishing in philosophy, with crowdsourced refereeing. I am sympathetic to the idea, but also see a few hurdles along the way. In no particular order, these are

1. Reputational issues tied to funding. With research funding in much of Europe and New Zealand now firmly tied to the number of pages you can get into a top ranked journal, it is very hard for non-established journals to get off the ground. Quite simply, if you work at a university, publishing in an upstart journal is a risk. In your evaluation, only the publications of the last five years count, so if you have a good paper that would be publishable in, say, top journal A, it is a risk to submit to upstart journal B unless you're sure that upstart journal B will make it to the top rank within 5 years. That is unlikely to happen, so most academic will duly submit to top journal A and leave upstart journal B along the wayside, thus further diminishing its chances to get to top rank.
2. Protection against kooks and cranks. In a number of Synthese polls we have seen the activists coming in pretty quick after the poll opened to try and swing the vote in a certain way. Publication of politically contentious issues by refereeing through a crowd sourcing model is going to be, eeerm, interesting.