The following is a brief report on the results of two recent studies conducted in partnership with the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) and designed to look at the changing publishing practices of academic societies. Carried out from July 2003 through December 2004, these studies looked at the characteristics of journals published by academic societies affiliated with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), and High Wire Press as well as titles listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The first study was cosponsored by AAHSL and AAMC through its Council of Academic Societies (CAS), which included some ninety-four member societies representing academic disciplines taught in schools of medicine. The primary goal of this study was to help these societies, as well as AAMC member institutions and their libraries, understand the problems and opportunities faced by the CAS society journals as they shift from paper to electronic publishing. The second study was cosponsored by ALPSP, High Wire Press, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and AAMC and was conducted by the Kaufman-Wills Group in Baltimore, Maryland. Called “Variations on Open Access,” this study sought to determine the potential impact of open access publishing on the business, editorial, and licensing practices of scholarly society journal publishers.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/20/2005 05:25:00 PM.
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.
