Announcing the launch of the OASPA

["Mukherjee, Mithu" <mithu.mukherjee@sagepub.co.uk>]

*** Apologies for cross-posting ***

Press Contact:Caroline Sutton
Tel/skype: +46 (0)18 495 1126
Cell: +47 90 69 05 06
Caroline.Sutton@co-action.net

ANNOUNCING THE LAUNCH OF THE OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHERS
ASSOCIATION, OASPA

14 October 2008, London. The Open Access Scholarly Publishers
Association, OASPA, announces its official launch today in
conjunction with an OA Day celebration hosted by the Wellcome
Trust in London.  The mission of OASPA is to support and
represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journals publishers
globally in all scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines
through an exchange of information, setting of industry
standards, advancing business and publishing models, advocating
for gold OA journals publishing, education and the promotion of
innovation.

Fromhaving first emerged as a new publishing model over a decade ago, OA publishing 
has become an embedded feature of the
scholarly publishing landscape: The Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ) lists over 3500 peer-reviewed journals; a growing
number of professional organizations offer OA publications;
university libraries increasingly support OA publishing services;
funding organizations support and encourage OA publishing; and a
long tail of independent editorial teams and societies now
publish their titles OA.  Professional OA publishers such as
BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have been
in business for over five years, while some scientist/scholar
publishers (editorial teams operating independently of a
professional publisher) have published their OA journals for a
decade or more. Moreover, a number of traditional publishing
houses are now engaging in Open Access activities, the recent
acquisition of BioMed Central by Springer and the SAGE-Hindawi
partnership being two cases in point. By bringing together those
who share an interest in developing appropriate business models,
tools and standards to support OA journals publishing, it is
hoped that success in these areas can be achieved more quickly to
the benefit of not only OASPA members, but more importantly, for
the scholarly community that OA publishers serve.

Membership in OASPA is open to both scholar publishers and
professional publishing organizations, including university
presses and for profit and non-profit organizations. Members are
expected to demonstrate a genuine interest in OA journals
publishing by having signed either the Berlin or Budapest
Declarations and must publish at least one full OA journal. Other
individuals and organizations who support OA journals publishing
or who are interested in exploring opportunities are also
welcome. Membership criteria and an application form can be found
on the OASPA website, www.oaspa.org.

The founding members of OASPA represent a broad spectrum of OA
publishers and include: BioMed Central, Co-Action Publishing,
Copernicus, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Journal of Medical
Internet Research (Gunther Eysenbach), Medical Education Online
(David Solomon), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), SAGE,
SPARC Europe and Utrecht University Library (Igitur).
Representatives from each of these publishers will form an
interim board until a first General Meeting is held during 2009.

###

Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association, OASPA, is launched
today 14 October 2008 in response to long-time informal
discussions among Open Access publishers, and aims to represent
the interests of OA journals publishers globally. For more
information about the organization, visit the OASPA website at:
www.oaspa.org.

The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds
innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally,
spending over 600 million pounds each year to support the brightest
scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports
public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health
and wellbeing.

Open Access (OA) scholarly publication refers to the
dissemination of peer-reviewed manuscripts containing original
research or scholarship immediately upon publication, at no
charge to user groups, without requiring registration or other
restrictions to access.  OA publications also allow users to
"copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly
and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital
medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution
of authorship...."

****