The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) has welcomed the support of David Willetts, the UK Minister of State for Universities and Science, for publishing and sustainable open access.
Writing this week in the Guardian on the UK government’s plans to make publicly funded research accessible to all, Willetts said the challenge was how one got there without ruining the value added by academic publishers. He further noted that one would still need to pay for such functions, which was why one attractive model – known as gold – had the funders of research covering the costs.
On February 4, 2012, STM released its statement ‘Publishers support sustainable open access’. It opens as “Publishers are committed to the widest possible dissemination of and access to the content they publish. We support any and all sustainable models of access that ensure the integrity and permanence of the scholarly record.” To date, 49 STM member and non-member publishers have signed the statement, which is available on the Association’s website atwww.stm-assoc.org/publishers-support-sustainable-open-access/.
STM is an international association of over 100 scientific, technical, medical and scholarly publishers, collectively responsible for more than 60 percent of the global annual output of research articles, 55 percent of the active research journals and the publication of tens of thousands of print and electronic books, reference works and databases.
Source: Scope
