A number of publishers have signed the Brussels Declaration on STM Publishing today, claiming, among other things, that it is self-evident that The mission of publishers is to maximise the dissemination of knowledge through economically self-sustaining business models.
For many publishers, nonproft and for-profit alike, a genuine interest in scholarship is indeed an important part of the organization's mission. However, it is extremely misleading to claim that it is self-evident that this is the mission of publishers, as clearly many publishers have other key goals - such as profits....This is reflected in the Strategy and Vision of Reed Elsevier, who "Since 2000, set ourselves a goal of achieving higher levels of revenues and earnings growth"....
Clearly, a statement that The mission of publishers is to maximise the dissemination of knowledge through economically self-sustaining business models - is not only not self-evident, it is glaringly inaccurate in not stating of of the key goals of many of the signatories, profit. If this Declaration had been submitted for peer review - it should never have been published without revision....
Heather follows this with separate posts on the mission statements of McGraw Hill ("McGraw-Hill, if this is self-evident - why is disseminating knowledge not mentioned in your own mission statement?") and Wiley ("Why does the About Wiley page say nothing about knowledge or dissemination of knowledge?").
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/14/2007 10:46:00 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.
