The Association of Learning and Professional Society Publishing (ALPSP) has submitted its response to the Public Access Policy consultation carried out by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). OSTP, part of the Executive Office of the President in the US government, is seeking public input on access to publicly-funded research results, such as those that appear in academic and scholarly journal articles.
Currently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) require that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. The Administration is seeking views as to whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented.
ALPSP believes that publishers should be allowed to control their own business models without the government expropriation of value added by private organisations. The Association encourages additional research to assess the level of demand and purpose of access to the peer-reviewed literature by researchers and the public so that the most appropriate and cost-effective solution can be found. It suggests that the US should instigate a large-scale, cooperative research study involving relevant stakeholders (similar to the PEER project in Europe) to gather evidence to inform OSTP policy in this area.
ALPSP asserts that the system of peer-reviewed journals greatly assists research efficiency and suggests that Federal agencies work with publishers to find acceptable policies for public access that do not have a deleterious impact on publishers' ability to add this value. Further, it states that publishers should determine if and when versions of the article to which they have added value should be made freely available, depending on the needs of different research disciplines.
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