DOI: 10.1145/1536616.1536618
Scott E. Delman
Responding to the Blogosphere
In the July issue of Communications, Moshe
Vardi addressed ACM’s access model in his
Editor’s Letter entitled “Open, Closed, or
Clopen Access?” (p. 5). The letter has since
been picked up in the blogosphere by
John Dupuis, the esteemed Science &
Engineering Librarian from York Uni-
versity in Toronto, on his blog Confes-
sions of a Science Librarian (http://sci-
enceblogs.com/confessions). Dupuis
raised some interesting questions that
I believe deserve response, especially
since as a scholarly publisher of nearly
two decades the topics of open access
(OA) and association publishing are
particularly near and dear to my heart.
It is worth repeating a sentiment
that Dupuis offered in his blog that
ACM is “on the side of the angels,” not
just because I really like the sound of
this, but because the sentiment under-
scores an important truth related to
both OA and association publishing,
the truth that association publishers
are in effect all OA publishers. In the
hotly debated realm of OA, sides have
been drawn and too often the issues
and players are portrayed as black and
white, right or wrong, good and evil.
These dichotomies are easy to pack-
age and sell to those who are buying,
but all too often they are inaccurate.
So is the case with the now famous
color-coded guide to OA publish-
ers. This system places publishers in
boxes, but fails to address the reality
that association publishers (regard-
less of their color-coded status) serve
as field-wide gatekeepers of informa-
tion and knowledge without a profit
motive to drive their decision making.
Associations like ACM are their mem-
bership, and as a result, are simply an
extension of the intentions and will of
the scientific communities they serve.
Much like the notion of an institution-
al repository at a more targeted level,
associations provide a single point of
entry for members to access the his-
torical and ongoing record of scholar-
ship for their entire field (if executed
well, that is).
The fact that ACM charges both for
access to the published information
in its Digital Library and also extends
the courtesy of “Green OA” to its au-
thors is actually less important to me
(while both are important aspects of
what we do) than the fact that ACM
and many other association publish-
In my opinion,
the question should
not be how will
society publishers
justify their existence
in the future,
but rather how
can they be better
at marketing
themselves and
promoting the
valuable work that
they continue to do.
ers serve as well-intentioned care-
takers of the scholarly record. I have
spent too many hours trying to identi-
fy the “most up-to-date version” of an
author’s article on his or her Web site
or digging through the various related
institutional repositories to identify a
specific version of an article to believe
that any other system at the present
time offers the advantages of publish-
ing with learned societies.
When I say that all association pub-
lishers are essentially OA publishers,
I mean this from the perspective that
associations and their corresponding
communities are one and the same.
In my opinion, the question should
not be how will society publishers
justify their existence in the future,
but rather how can they be better at
marketing themselves and promoting
the valuable work that they continue
to do. Publishing will always have a
cost, whether it relates to print pub-
lications or publishing information
online. In most well-researched ar-
ticles I’ve read on OA, all parties gen-
erally tend to agree on this. The real
question is where is this money best
spent and how. As a longtime publish-
er who has worked for both for-profit
and a leading association publisher,
I feel strongly that this is where any
debate should be focused, and I am
confident that the most valuable and
well-run professional society pub-
lishers will in the long run continue
to prove their worth to the scientific
community at large.
Scott E. Delman, PuBlIshER