Share and share alike? STM wants your views

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) has opened a community-wide consultation into the sharing of research articles.

Running from 9 February until 10 April, the consultation is aimed at starting discussion and to gain a better understanding of the current landscape of article sharing through scholarly collaboration networks and sites. Feedback is invited, including input on a draft outline of voluntary principles.

STM says it would like to make sharing simple and seamless for academic researchers, enhancing scholarly collaboration, while being consistent with access and usage rights associated with journal articles. The consultation process aims to build consensus around a commonly agreed framework whereby all players within the community can work together to facilitate  sharing which benefits researchers, institutions, and society as a whole, with a core set of principles that maximises this experience for all.

The working group convened by STM to draft the principles and seek community input includes representatives from a number of organisations.

Project lead Fred Dylla (CEO and executive director of the American Institute of Physics) said: 'We see this as a first step in what we hope will be an ongoing collaborative process. We want to ultimately develop practical solutions. To do that, we need to work together with scientific collaboration networks, researchers, libraries and publishers. We hope to get expressions of interest in getting involved, support for the voluntary principles and feedback that will inform our collective path forward.'

Follow the link to the STM site, below, for more details.