About two months ago, I published an interview with Richard Poynder in which he discussed his recent announcement that he was “signing off from reporting on open access,” because “the movement has failed and is being rebranded in order to obscure the failure.” The interview generated lots of comments, and after watching and participating in that discussion, I added an additional comment of my own, observing that I was “getting the feeling that this post has emboldened some people to speak out who might not have felt able to do so before. And this leads me to wonder: who might be interested in the creation of a forum for multi-perspective, real-time discussion of OA and related issues?”

Several people subsequently reached out to me privately, expressing interest in such a forum. After getting through the holidays and then spending a few weeks in brainstorming conversation with them, I decided to take the leap and I created a new listserv, called Open Café, dedicated to “the free, open, constructive, and civil discussion of issues related to open scholarship – including open access, open science, open data, and adjacent topics. Open Café is a place for people across the full spectrum of viewpoints and perspectives to ask questions, offer opinions, and share information in an environment of mutual respect and openmindedness.”

I did so with some trepidation. Does the scholarly communication ecosystem really need (or want) another listserv? Aren’t people tired of talking about open access? Aren’t there already enough fora for these kinds of conversations? But since the risk was low (if no one signs up, then my questions are answered and we move on), I went ahead and created the list and announced it on a handful of social media sites and email discussion lists.

I was entirely unprepared for the response.

I made the announcement last Thursday morning; by the end of the day the list had 131 subscribers. I was pleased! Clearly there was at least a small group of people (globally speaking) who felt this kind of conversation was still needed and who wanted to participate. I went to bed feeling good about Open Café’s prospects as an intimate but interesting and probably useful venue for discussion.

When I woke up Friday morning, there were about 140 more subscription requests. As I write, it’s almost 8:00 am on Friday, and the requests continue to come in (13 have arrived in my inbox since I started writing this post about 10 minutes ago). Interestingly — excitingly — they’re coming from literally all regions of the globe and from all sectors of the scholarly communication ecosystem: librarians, publishers, nonprofits, government agencies, researchers, etc.

Now, I fully realize that a discussion group of several hundred (so far) doesn’t really represent a listserv powerhouse when compared to other, more well-established lists. But the fact that this many people signed up in less than 24 hours does suggest a few things to me:

• The global conversation about open scholarship in general, and open access in particular, is not over.
• There is a significant number of people in our community who are looking for a venue in which they can speak more freely on these issues than they feel they can in other venues.
• Despite what pundits and social commentators might tell you, there continues to a real appetite for civil, reasoned, and mutually respectful discourse on important topics of social and fiscal policy.

I’m really excited to see where this conversation goes. Feel free to join us! Just go to this page and sign up.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go approve the subscription requests of another [checks inbox] 20 — oops, wait, 25 — participants.