An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers and university academic leaders has called on US federal agencies that fund research, to develop and implement a more robust scholarly publishing system. The policies ought to ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund ‘as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal’, the panel has said. The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened last summer by the US House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Policymakers asked the group to examine the current state of scholarly publishing and seek consensus recommendations for expanding public access to scholarly journal articles.
The various communities represented in the Roundtable have been working to develop recommendations that would improve public access without curtailing the ability of the scientific publishing industry to publish peer-reviewed scientific articles.
The Roundtable's recommendations, endorsed in full by a majority of the panel (12 out of 14 members), seek to balance the need for and potential of increased access to scholarly articles with the need to preserve the essential functions of the scholarly publishing enterprise, according to the report.
The Roundtable identified a set of principles viewed as essential to a robust scholarly publishing system, including the need to preserve peer review; the necessity of adaptable publishing business models; the benefits of broader public access; the importance of archiving; and the interoperability of online content.
Also, the group affirmed the high value of the ‘version of record’ for published articles and of all stakeholders' contributions to sustaining the best possible system of scholarly publishing during a time of tremendous change.
In issuing its report, the Roundtable urged all interested parties to move forward, beyond ‘the too-often acrimonious’ past debate over access issues towards a collaborative framework. Within the framework, federal funding agencies should be able to build an interdependent system of scholarly publishing that expands public access and enhances the broad, intelligent use of the results of federally-funded research.
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