PSP Joins STM in Position on Open Access

In a not-too-surprising move, the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the American Association of Publishers (AAP/PSP) has endorsed the Brussels Declaration issued last month by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM).

The Brussels document supports the position that multiple business models are healthy and warns, "Open deposit of accepted manuscripts risks destabilising subscription revenues and undermining peer review."

Hotly debated on the listserves (see Liblicense, for example) the declaration is a the next reponse in a series of geographic pronouncements like the Budapest Initiative, the Bethesda Statement, and the Berlin Declaration. (There must be a Saturday Night Live sketch in here somewhere.)

In the meantime, publishers and librarians are experimenting with open access models, which are becoming an accepted part of the scholarly dissemination landscape. Everything in moderation.