I've got a story in the works for Wired News about the latest developments in the debate over open-access publishing. The other day, I interviewed Brian Crawford, chairman of the executive council of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.
Crawford, a scientist, is acting as a spokesperson for publishers of academic, medical and technical journals, thousands of which are members of the publishers association.
I asked him about the hiring of a p.r. firm to fight back against the open-access forces:
This is a normal course of business, to engage a public relationsfirm. Those who have been advocating government intervention in science[Blogger note: Through open-access legislation] have been using theirown lobbying and p.r. efforts for several years now. They’ve beenfloating simple and misleading sound bites.
Publisherswere increasingly having to answer these kinds of charges in the media.
We just want some advice on how to communicate our message moreeffectively.
Crawford said publishers havebeen doing a lot to make research openly available, but "this sort ofactivity really gets very little attention."
I asked him about the message that publishers want to get across:
Ourmessages are not as simple as "the taxpayer pays for the research, theresearch should be free.' They're more nuanced, and we're trying tocommunicate with the same integrity that we've always communicatedwith. Our core messages is that we believe in the integrity of the peerreview system and the investments in it. It's inappropriate for thegovernment (to interfere).
