The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) has published its report on the state of the publishing industry, Scholarly Journals Publishing Practice. Although the report shows that publishers are generally in good health, the ALPSP warned that the report should be seen as a benchmark against which to assess the future effects of changes in scholarly publishing, particularly the move towards open access.
Currently RCUK are supportive of 'Gold Open Access', where the researcher pays an article publication charge (APC) to enable the immediate release of the research. However, recognising that there may not be sufficient funding for this to be achieved for all articles, RCUK are also accepting what is called the 'Green route', where an accepted manuscript is made freely available following a suitable embargo period.
The ALPSP concerns over 6 month embargoes were made clear in a survey carried out of international librarians. This revealed that only 56 percent of libraries in the Science, Technology and Medical area would continue to subscribe and only 35 percent in the Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, if the majority of content was freely accessible within 6 months of publication.
The Learned and Professional Societies that ALPSP represents exist to promote and support an academic discipline or closely related group of subject disciplines. Most, if not all, are not-for-profit, supporting themselves through their membership fees, services and in many instances, through publishing income.
The report by the ALPSP, Scholarly Journals Publishing Practice, is the fourth survey in a series that looks into scholarly publishing practice for journals, and was conducted during the summer of 2012. It follows on from earlier surveys conducted in 2003, 2005 and 2008 published by ALPSP as editions of Scholarly Publishing Practice.
