Subject: PRISM - for Toplist From: "Claude Schochet" Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 13:25:50 -0400 The Dean of Libraries at Wayne State sent me the following email from the Association of Research Libraries re PRISM. Those concerned should read the Update at the link below. Wayne State does have a university press but it is not one of the 26 that constitute the AAP. There is more information along these lines available but I didn’t want to totally overload toplist. CS From: Karla Hahn Date: September 5, 2007 3:50:12 PM EDT To: "ARL Directors Discussion List" Subject: [ARL-DIRECTORS] Updated Issue Brief on PR Campaign Against Public Access to Federally Funded Research Reply-To: "ARL Directors Discussion List" To: ARL Directors From: Karla Hahn, Director Office of Scholarly Communication Prue Adler, Associate Executive Director. Re: Updated Issue Brief on PR Campaign Against Public Access to Federally Funded Research In the last few days, growing criticism has been directed to the latest product of a public relations campaign sponsored by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) against public access initiatives concerning access to federally funded research and open access generally. Word of the campaign first broke in February of this year. A news article in the journal, Nature, reported on a set of simple messages being developed conflating public access to federally funded research with the destruction of peer review and government censorship. An issue brief was prepared at that time and shared with the ARL community. That issue brief has now been updated to respond to the announcement of the new PRISM coalition. The PRISM web site presents a number of statements of the simple messages reported earlier, albeit reflecting further refinement over time. As news of this campaign spreads, it presents an opportunity to engage in conversations with members of your campus community concerning the changes to the scholarly communication system and how this may affect scholarly journal publishing. This revised memo provides talking points to assist you and your staff in working with members of your campus community with regards to a publishers' public relations campaign against open/public access initiatives and legislation concerning access to federally funded research. The updated issue brief, "AAP PR Campaign against Open Access and Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Update re the PRISM Coalition" is available at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/issue-brief-aap-pr-prism.pdf The press release for the PRISM site can be viewed at http://www.prismcoalition.org/press.htm Please let us know if there is additional information that we can provide. Karla Hahn, Director Office of Scholarly Communications Association of Research Libraries 21 Dupont Circle Washington, D.C. 20036 voice: 202-296-2296 fax: 202-872-0884 email: karla@arl.org Claude Schochet Mathematics Dept., Wayne State University claude@math.wayne.edu