One small point - I don't suppose there's any chance they could change the
acronym? COPE is pretty well established as the Committee On Publication
Ethics?
Alan
-----Original Message-----
From: Heather Morrison [mailto:hgmorris_at_sfu.ca]
Sent: 18 September 2009 05:12
To: American Scientist Open Access Forum; SPARC-OAForum_at_arl.org;
SCHOLCOMM_at_ala.org; ERIL-L_at_LISTSERV.BINGHAMTON.EDU
Subject: Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity: key to transitioning to
open access
Kudos to Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, and the University of California
at Berkeley for initiative the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity
(COPE). Details can be found here:
http://www.oacompact.org/
COPE is a key initiative in the transition to open access.
Signatories are asked to make a commitment to provide support for open
access publishing that is equitable to the support currently provided to
journals through subscriptions.
One of the reasons COPE is key is simply the recognition that universities
(largely through libraries) are the support system for scholarly
communication. Scholarly publishing is not a straightforward business
transaction where one side produces goods and the other purchases them.
Rather, it is university faculty who do the research, writing, reviewing,
and often the editing, often on time and in space provided by the
universities. Scholarly publishing is a service, rather than a good.
Once we understand that academic library budgets are the support for
scholarly communication, it is much easier to see that we should be
prioritizing supports that make sense for scholarly communication into the
future, and equity for open access publishing is a great beginning.
Best wishes to COPE. I encourage every library and university to join.
There is no immediate financial commitment required, rather a commitment to
develop models for equity.
Supporting transition to gold OA, in my opinion, in no way diminishes the
importance of green OA. There are good reasons for pursuing both
strategies, both in the short and the long term.
Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
Received on Sat Sep 19 2009 - 06:16:14 BST