SLA and Open Access, Part Deux
I'm a day late and a dollar short on this, but I think it's good news. A while back, I inquired whether SLA would take an official position on open access, and got a very nice comment from Doug Newcomb regarding SLA's take on this.
He was nice enough to send me a follow-up note on the following:
SLA's Board Calls for Collaboration among Creators, Publishers, and End Users
...
SLA's Board of Directors calls for collaboration among creators, publishers, and end users of scientific research materials to work toward a mutually beneficial information infrastructure, formulating pricing and distribution strategies that will provide equity for publishers and users alike.It is SLA's practice to ensure the flow of information in the corporate, government, research and scholarly communities, and when appropriate to collaborate with other professional associations, agencies and interested parties to facilitate the change required to increase the flow of information to the information user communities. It is for this purpose that SLA participates with such groups as Information Access Alliance, a coalition promoting a new standard of antitrust review which should be adopted by state and federal antitrust enforcement agencies in examining merger transactions in the serials publishing industry http://www.informationaccess.org, and maintains communications and possible collaboration on projects with groups such as the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition's ( SPARC) Open Access Working Group (OAWG).
SLA will continue to monitor Open Access and journal pricing, and welcomes comments from its members and others.
Very carefully worded (of course), but a good start.