Resolution: Free Access to Scientific Journals

Anonymous Patron writes “Forty-eight of the nation’s and the world’s top medical and scientific societies and not-for-profit scholarly publishers have signed the Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science, a statement proclaiming their commitment to providing free access and wide dissemination of published research findings. The announcement declared that the DC Principles represent a “needed ‘middle ground’ in the increasingly heated debate between those who advocate immediate unfettered online access to medical and scientific research findings and advocates of the current journal publishing system.” The press release announcing the statement indicated that the societies signing the DC Principles represent over 600,000 scientist and clinician members and publish over 380 journals. A closer look revealed that the journal titles held by publisher signatories totaled 115 and all signatories were currently hosted on HighWire Press, a Web-based hosting service for academic publishers from Stanford University. Drafted over the past year in discussions initiated at meetings of HighWire Press publishers, the DC Principles are a response to charges that current publisher practices impede access to published scientific research. According to Lenne Miller, senior director of publications at the Endocrine Society and active member of the DC Principles organization, the initiative began as an attempt to counter the Public Library of Science‘s open access advocacy, which had “tarred scholarly society publishers with the same brush as commercial publishers.””

March 23, 2004 by Uncategorized 0

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