Book People Archive

University Presses Take Their Stand [on open access/publishing]



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http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/28/open

February 28, 2007 | Inside Higher Ed

University Presses Take Their Stand

By Scott Jaschik

The open access debate is one of the hottest topics in academic 
publishing, with advocates for access and publishers battling for 
political and public support. University presses have been feeling 
somewhat in the middle and sometimes ignored -- and they responded 
Tuesday with a policy paper 
(http://www.aaupnet.org/aboutup/issues/oa/statement.pdf) outlining their 
perspective.

In many respects, the document from the Association of American 
University Presses focuses on potential harm that could be done to their 
operations by the open access model, talking about the potential for it 
to hurt circulation revenues, and emphasizing that university presses 
are not exactly wealthy institutions. But the paper also talks about the 
many experiments university presses are undertaking with open access or 
alternative pricing models -- and goes one further. While the open 
access debate has focused on scholarly journals, the presses suggest 
that models that work for journals may well also work for monographs.

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