Open access publishers’ code of conduct attracts scrutiny
The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) is a young organization just about to hold their 2nd annual meeting on August 22-24 in Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic. The have already assembled a large membership roster of international publishing organizations, scholarly society publishers, and independent open access journals. There is also a published code of conduct on their web site, rather succinct and simple:
As there is room for interpretation and an invitation to suggest revision, this policy has attracted the attention of one of the biggest advocates of green open access, Professor Stevan Harnad, who blogs, speaks, and is the least shy person I know when it comes to scientific defenses of the OA advantage for enhancing citation counts.
What are Stevan’s initial concerns?
- A need to address proportional membership (a publisher with both OA and commercial journals) and the need to weight member voting rights.
- A need to promote the benefits of conversion of established journals to OA.
These concerns were posted to the blog page that announced the OASPA assessment of new applications and complaints procedures. There is also room for your comments on the blog page.
