The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has publicly released its comment in opposition to the NIH plan. Excerpt: 'NIH officials have indicated that they do not intend to harm the STM publishing market. For this intention to become reality, the NIH proposal must assume that revenues to support the peer reviewing, editorial and production processes etc. will be obtained through alternative business models. Specifically, NIH must be assuming that either: (a) a six months period of exclusivity will be enough to create a sustainable marketable demand for journal content; or; (b) that an author-pays model will be funded and will be successful. There is little evidence to indicate that either business model is viable or sustainable. In fact, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. In any event, we believe it is entirely inappropriate for a government agency of any country to be advocating and supporting particular business models, either directly or indirectly.'
(PS: Brief response. There are several reasons to think that the NIH plan will not undercut journal subscriptions. The plan does not require non-OA journals to convert to OA journals. The STM comment fails to acknowledge that the current system is badly broken and undermines the significant taxpayer investment in research. Hence it does not acknowledge the need for the NIH to reassert the public interest.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/16/2004 09:39:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
