ALPSP Survey: Over 60% of Journal Publishers Are Already Green

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 19:47:06 +0000

Posting by Peter Suber to Open Access News:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_03_21_fosblogarchive.html#a108031463701016281

ALPSP principles of scholarship-friendly publishing

The ALPSP http://www.alpsp.org/default.htm has announced its
Principles of Scholarship-Friendly Journal Publishing Practice.
http://www.alpsp.org/SFPubpress.htm
It released the principles today at a London conference of the same name
although the document containing the principles is dated January 2004.
http://www.alpsp.org/events/s260304.htm

Summary from the press release: http://www.alpsp.org/SFPubpress.htm

"It is in our interest as publishers to satisfy the needs of our authors,
readers and institutional customers to the best of our ability;
this entails paying close attention to what these communities are
saying, and collaborating with them to develop new approaches as need
arises. Scholarship-friendly publishers maximise access to and use
of content; we also maximise its quality and, thus, prestige. It goes
without saying that --by one business model or another-- publishers need
to make enough money not just to cover our costs, but also to satisfy
the needs of our business, and to continue to support the activities
to which publishing income may contribute. However, we recognise that
institutions' funds are increasingly inadequate to purchase all the
information required by users, and we welcome collaboration with our
customers to find new approaches which might solve this dilemma."
Excerpts from the principles themselves:

    1.1.2 Posting of final version. Our survey shows that over 60% of
publishers allow authors to post the final, published version of their
article on websites or repositories, some even providing the PDF for
this purpose. Although some speculate that increasing use of
OAI-compliant metadata will ultimately enable such posting to
undermine subscription and licence income, this does not seem to be
the case so far.

    1.2 Dissemination by the publisher. Maximising access to authors'
work is good for the publisher as well as the author, provided it does
not undermine the publisher's financial model. Most publishers are
finding a variety of ways to make more content available to more
people.

    1.2.4 Archival access. Publishers have a variety of models for
providing access to their online back-files....If the timing is
carefully chosen (it may differ between disciplines), it appears that
[free online access] need not undermine sales.

    1.2.6 Open Access journals. Making journals completely free to
readers everywhere in the world is an appealing idea and one which is
in tune with the mission of many learned societies, although it is of
course necessary to assure that costs are adequately covered, for
example by authors, institutions, or funding agencies; there is a
growing number of Open Access journals, many of them experimental. Not
all publishers will feel able to take this route, but all will be
interested to learn from the findings of the pioneers.

    2.2 Citation. ...There is early evidence that widespread online
access increases citations --thus it would seem to follow that Open
Access journals might prove in time be the mostly highly cited of all.

------

Second Open Access News posting by Peter Suber:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_03_21_fosblogarchive.html#a108031145973018041

OA and impact factor

In today's issue of the UKSG Serials eNews,
http://www.biblio-tech.com/UKSG/SI_PD.cfm?AC=4725
Peter Evans excerpts
http://www.biblio-tech.com/UKSG/SI_PD.cfm?AC=4725&PID=10&ZID=1173
many of the contributions
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0403/msg00103.html
to a discussion thread on LibLicense about open access and impact factor.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/
Received on Fri Mar 26 2004 - 19:47:06 GMT

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