(1) In case anyone is wondering, I have nothing to do with any behind-the-scenes attempts to get Phil Davis to shut up (this is the first I hear of them).

(2) I’m actually trying to get Phil to open up more, by responding substantively to the substantive open commentary I have repeatedly made on his widely publicized but deeply flawed study of 2008.

(3) It is Phil who has now several times declined to post my critiques and my responses to his critiques, on the grounds (alternatively) that they were also multiply posted elsewhere (as his too were!) or that they were off-topic (because I was criticizing his work, not just responding to his always-welcome substantive criticisms of my own work).

(4) Hence I no longer try to respond on Phil’s sector of the SSP blog whose openness you are here extolling.

(5) There is, however, a rather obvious difference between my postings and Phil’s: Mine are substantive and on-topic (the topic being OA and methodology in OA studies, both Phil’s and mine), whereas many of Phil’s postings are stunningly shrill, rude and ad-hominem; some are useful and welcome, when making substantive critical points about my work, but they are evasive when the points are about his work, and largely abusive when they concern me, personally, which is quite often!

(6) Your own postings, Ken, though I think you truly believe you are being objective and even-handed, are just as stunningly blind to this obvious disparity between ad hominem name-calling and on-topic substance (in a word: between heat and light).

(7) I expect that some of this blindness to the tone of Phil’s postings is a result of the partisan support it always evinces from the background chorus of thumbs up that (amazingly) continues to arise whenever something negative (substantive or ad hominem) is said about me or my work in Phil’s corner of the Scholarly Kitchen, and the chorus of thumbs down when a response appears there (regardless of how temperate and substantive it may be) that seems to tend in the other direction.

(8) You have replied to me that the Scholarly Kitchen is diversified and open, as evidenced by the fact that you disagree amongst yourselves: You’re still missing the obvious here.

(9) By the way, the commentfrom Gene Glass is not evidence that the Scholarly Kitchen is indeed a diversified, representative venue: Gene would never have known about the erroneous points Phil was making, unchallenged, about meta-analysis, had I not drawn Gene’s attention to it. (What I had not known, but learned to my surprise and delight, was that Gene was not only a distinguished expert on meta-analysis but a longstanding advocate of OA!)

(10) I would have provided hyperlinks to document all this, but the SSP spam filter unfortunately tends to block my postings when they have too many links, even when they are not being blocked intentionally by Phil!