In a move that puts them at odds with the official stance of the Association of American University Presses, a group of university-press directors yesterday issued a position statement that endorses “the free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than 12 months after publication.”
The statement was signed by the directors of a group of small and medium-size presses, including Penn State University, Rockefeller University Press, the University of Michigan Press, and the University Press of New England. It was posted on Peter Suber’s Open Access News blog.
“The signatories think that it is important to publicly align ourselves with the stance taken by many university faculties and administrators on scholarly communication,” Mike Rossner, the Rockefeller press’s director, told The Chronicle by e-mail on Wednesday. His press makes its content publicly available six months after publication, he said, “and our revenues have increased every year since then.” That experience has led his press to conclude that “providing public access to scholarly-journal articles after a short delay is compatible with our subscription-based business model.”
from The Chronicle: Daily News Blog, 4 June 2009, by Jennifer Howard
Text from the Position Statement:
Position Statement From University Press Directors on Free Access to Scholarly Journal Articles:
- The undersigned university press directors support the dissemination of scholarly research as broadly as possible.
- We support the free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than 12 months after publication. We understand that the length of time before free release of journal articles will by necessity vary for other disciplines.
- We support the principle that scholarly research fully funded by governmental entities is a public good and should be treated as such. We support legislation that strengthens this principle and oppose legislation designed to weaken it.
- We support the archiving and free release of the final, published version of scholarly journal articles to ensure accuracy and citation reliability.
- We will work directly with academic libraries, governmental entities, scholarly societies, and faculty to determine appropriate strategies concerning dissemination options, including institutional repositories and national scholarly archives.
The statement is signed by the directors of the University Press of Florida, University of Akron Press, University Press of New England, Athabasca University Press, Wayne State University Press, University of Calgary Press, University of Michigan Press, Rockefeller University Press, Penn State University Press, and University of Massachusetts Press.
