AIP’s mission and policy is to achieve that widest dissemination of the research results and other information we publish.
Since the arrival of the Web, AIP believes it has achieved wider and more affordable dissemination than ever before in history, with more subscribers, more readers and more libraries and other institutions and people using our journals than ever before. Some use them free or at very low cost under various open access models.
AIP believes it has been extremely successful in using and investing in technology and new online platforms towards that end.
AIP has instituted and experimented with many business models, including free and open access.
AIP believes that publishers should be free to experiment with various business models in the market place of ideas and economics.
AIP is fearful of and against government mandates that provides rules in favor of one business model over another.
AIP is against funding agencies mandating free access to articles after they have undergone costly peer review or editing by publishers.
AIP is against the government posting or distributing free copies of articles that publishers have invested in producing.
AIP believes that funding agencies have every right to report their results to the public, but that if they choose to use publisher-produced, peer-reviewed material to do that, then the publisher should receive appropriate compensation.
AIP is also fearful about what government agencies might do with articles they receive under any deposit system. In particular, AIP is fearful of mission creep with government agencies using the deposited material beyond the goal of public access, for example in enhanced publications that compete with the private sector.
PS: The same issue of the PSP Bulletin (pp. 4, 8) reprints the September 22 letter from 10 provosts to Senators Cornyn and Lieberman, opposing FRPAA. See my September 22 comments on the letter.
Comment. No doubt peer review is added value. It may be added by unpaid editors and referees, but there are transaction costs and they are paid by publishers. On the other side, government OA mandates only apply to research funded by taxpayers. Since publishers and taxpayers both make a contribution to the value of peer-reviewed articles arising from publicly-funded research, what's the best way to split this baby? The current method is a reasonable compromise: a period of exclusivity for the publisher followed by free online access for the public. More, even after the embargo period ends, the existing policies and proposals only mandate access to the author's peer-reviewed manuscript, not to the published edition. Publishers who want to block OA mandates per se, rather than just negotiate the embargo period, are saying that they want no compromise, that the public should get nothing for its investment, and that publishers should control access to research conducted by others, written up by others, and funded by taxpayers.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/10/2006 08:33:00 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.
