STM, an international association of around 100 publishers, has issued a press release regarding the recent Report and Recommendations from the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
STM takes issue, however, with some of the other recommendations and goals expressed in the Report. Firstly, while STM supports US agencies in the development of public access policies to the results of research funded by those agencies, we do not agree that the scholarly articles arising from publisher investment and value add fall under this category. Government research grants currently cover the cost of the research only. Government research grants do not cover the costs of publication.
Secondly, while welcoming the consultation and collaboration that has occurred with our industry, STM believes the goal of US agencies in establishing a "global publishing system" is redundant and wasteful and ignores the essentially international nature of STM publishing, which has, without any government assistance anywhere in the world, enabled more access to more people than at any time in history.
Thirdly, if there is to be no compensation for the use of journal mediated content, STM supports the need for embargo periods. There is, however, no evidence whatsoever to support the recommendation that embargo periods of 0 to 12 months could be adopted for "many sciences" without problem. STM is leading a three year experiment part-funded by the European Commission (the PEER Project) to find out the effects of various embargo periods on journals. We strongly encourage such an evidence-based policy investigation in the US as well.
Finally, while STM supports the recommendation that the final published article should be given primacy (the so called VoR or Version of Record) over the proliferation of other imperfect earlier versions, it is through this final version —and the creation and maintenance of their authoritative journals—that STM publishers provide significant added value; to make final published articles (VoRs) free immediately upon publication must involve some mechanism of financial compensation.
