Evaluating the Cost of Knowledge 6 years on
The Cost of Knowledge site has over 18000 signatures. Almost all were obtained within a few weeks after its launch. It was the event that caused me to become committed to reform of the scholarly publication system, and gave a lot of hope at the time. However it seems that the momentum was squandered because of lack of planning for a more serious campaign. I don't blame those who ran the campaign (who among us really thought progress would be so difficult?) and especially not @wtgowers who may not even have been planning to run a campaign when his original blog post created such a stir. We do need to learn from the experience.
One of the problems with the boycott is that many editors sympathetic to reform have quit their editorial roles, leaving the journals under the control of people less sympathetic. Another is that it was essentially negative, with no clear positive goal. Now that the Fair Open Access Principles have been formulated and seem to be fairly well supported by the community, at least there is some goal to focus on. Another problem is that some people were well-meaning but did not actually follow through on the boycott.
I would like as much input as possible here from everyone.