Public Affairs Introduction

The mission of STM Public Affairs is to create and improve a positive, healthy and sustainable international business environment for our worldwide industry by streamlining and enabling the communication path between involved stakeholders. We do so by:

• educating key stakeholders about the value that STM publishers add to scholarly communication
• advocating the adoption of policies that recognize and support the key role of STM publishers in implementing innovative solutions to advance science and contributing positively to the knowledge society
• acting with integrity and honesty in fulfilling our role in the dissemination and discovery of scholarly communication.

We created a Public Affairs Committee to discuss government relations, strategy, and policy communications issues and provide advice and recommendations on these matters as appropriate to the STM Board and/or Chief Executive Officer. The Committee reviews ways in which it might help define the message we send to key stakeholders about the publishing industry and its role in access, dissemination, and preservation of scholarly information worldwide.

STM challenges JISC over validity of latest open access advocacy

STM, the Publishers Association (PA) and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) have continued to be concerned about the validity of claims made by recent advocacy deriving from the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). We believe this seriously understates the contribution of the publishing industry to UK research and makes misleading and incorrect claims about the potential cost benefits of open access.

The report in question, based on controversial work commissioned by JISC from Australian economist John Houghton, compelled STM, the PA and ALPSP jointly to write this letter to JISC Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read restating our concerns about Houghton's work and its derivatives, and the way in which this is being used as the basis for misleading claims to UK higher education institutions. Our letter proposed a meeting beteen JISC and representatives of the publishing industry. The response from JISC ignored our concerns, but nonethless agreed to a meeting.

In preparation for the meeting, the associations sent JISC a further letter and a presentation to explain the disparity between JISC perceptions and the reality of scholarly journal publishing as an energetic, innovative industry that is greatly valued by researchers and which has contributed significantly to efficiency and productivity gains for academic research in the UK and around the world.

Unfortunately, JISC continue to contest this reality and any positives deriving from our meeting were few and far between, as explained in our follow-up letter to Dr. Read.

STM, the PA and ALPSP will continue to work together to correct misleading information about our industry, disseminated to the very research community that we seek to serve. We welcome any comments from our members or other interested stakeholders.

Michael Mabe (STM), Graham Taylor (PA), Ian Russell (ALPSP)

Resources

Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the costs and benefits John Houghton, et al

Modelling Scholarly Communications Options: Costs and Benefits for Universities  Alma Swan

Letter to Malcolm Read of JISC, 15 March 2010

Response from Malcolm Read, 22 March 2010

Letter to Malcolm Read of JISC, 8 April 2010

STM journal publishing in 2010 presentation

Letter to Malcolm Read of JISC, 14 April 2010