STM response to Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science

The International Association for Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) welcomes the useful contribution of the Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science to the discussion about how to achieve Open Science. We do note with some disappointment that the process leading to the Call for Action as not sufficiently transparent and did not reflect valuable stakeholder input.

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As publishers, our mission is to ensure science is more reliable, efficient, and responsive to societal challenges. We believe that all in the community engaged in advancing Open Science can work together to avoid undermining the quality of published research information in the following ways:
– Recognising that there is a vibrant publishing market, with healthy competition between publishers for authors. Our success, now and in future, depends on how well we serve the needs of the research community.
– Any transition to open access publishing where costs are paid up front – often called gold open access – will cost research intensive countries more than the current system. Therefore, a transition to this form of Open Access requires joint ownership. All stakeholders – universities, funders, researchers, policy makers and publishers – need to take responsibility and share the economic burden.
– In order to be sustainable, any transition to open access reliant
on the current subscription business model – often called green open access – requires embargo periods that respect distinct needs of each discipline community. Publishers already support a positive, diverse, flexible, interoperable and sustainable research communication environment that includes GreenOA, with just one proviso…

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