Budapest Open Access Initiative: BOAI Forum Archive

boaiforum messages

From: "David J Solomon" <dsolomon AT msu.edu>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:10:27 -0400

This spring Gunter Eysenbach and I proposed forming a professional 
organization for open access publishers. At about the same time a number of 
the major professional open access publishers had also begun working towards 
this goal.  We have been working together to develop a set of bylaws and a 
plan for the organization over the summer.  I wanted to update you on our 
progress in forming what we are calling the Open Access Scholarly Publishers 
Association (OASPA).  I apologize for the lack of updates for several 
months. We had a difficult period working out the structure and governance 
process for OASPA and the proposed organization was in flux. It seemed best 
to wait until there was more clarity in how OASPA would evolve before 
providing an update to the OA community. 

I am pleased to say that we have made a great deal of progress and intend to 
announce the launch of OASPA on SPARC Open Access Day, October 14, 2008. We 
hope to have the web site in operation and begin the process of accepting 
applications for membership at that point. 

We are tentatively planning of organizing a membership meeting next spring 
where a permanent board of directors can be elected and a set of bylaws 
formally adopted by the membership. 

The draft bylaws are currently being revised but should be available with 
the launch of the organization. Voting memberships will be open to 
organizations that publish open access journals including professional 
publishers, individual or groups of scholar/researchers who publish OA 
journals without full-time professionals, academic/research libraries, 
university presses and other organizations that publish OA journals. 
Membership will be contingent on adhering to a code of conduct that we 
intend to ensure a high level of integrity in the operation of OA journals 
published by the member organizations. 

Voting membership and representation on the board of directors will also be 
available to organizations such as SPARC that are not publishers but provide 
key support and services to open access publishing. 

I also want to thank the group of colleagues who have worked on developing 
the plan for OASPA: 

Lars Björnshauge (SPARC Europe)
Matthew Cockerill (BMC)
Gunther Eysenback (Journal of Medical Internet Research)
Ahmed Hindawi (Hindawi)
Kevin Haggerty (Canadian Journal of Sociology)
Mark Patterson (PLOS)
Paul Peters (Hindawi)
Martin Rasmussen (Copernicus)
Bas Savenije (SPARC Europe) 

I particularly like to thank Caroline Sutton from Co-Action Publishing who 
worked closely with me to keep the process moving and  David Prosser of 
SPARC Europe who not only provided valuable input in the discussion but 
through SPARC Europe has provided support that is making it possible to 
launch OASPA. 

David Solomon (Medical Education Online) 

 E-mail:  openaccess@soros.org .