The push for open access publications should not deviate our attention from an even (IMHO) bigger problem: open science.
We can easily skip paywalls by making the pdfs of all our publications available for free in our home page (and now most of our journals grant you permission to do so, at least for unedited versions of the accepted manuscripts) and you can always ask the author for a copy if you don’t find a free version online and don’t want to pay. So, I don´t think paywalls really stop anybody from reading the paper/s she needs to conduct her research.
Instead, I believe a bigger problem is the lack of reusability and replicability of the data / experiments mentioned in the papers. No excuses here. It´s up to us to avoid the sad reality shown in this video
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2zK3sAtr-4&w=560&h=315]
So, let’s continue the fight for open access but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture: open science!
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Related to the “reusability and replicability of the data / experiments mentioned in the papers”, I stumbled upon this: http://www.elsevier.com/executablepaper