September 2007 Archives

The Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Maryland has announced its 2007-08 schedule of asynchronous online workshops. The first workshop, Copyright and Academic Culture: New Issues and Developments, will be held from Oct. 1-12 and will be moderated by Siva Vaidhyanathan, PhD, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Law, University of Virginia. The deadline for registration is Sept. 28. For a complete list of upcoming workshops along with registration information, visit the Center’s web site.

A coalition of publishers has announced the formation of PRISM, The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine, to lobby against perceived threats to science and scholarly publishing. The PRISM website states that PRISM was "established by The Executive Council of the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to educate policy makers and the American people about the risks posed by government intervention in scholarly publishing."

The initiative has drawn fire from researchers and other publishers. And at least one academic has resigned in protest from the editorial board of a journal published by PRISM supporters.

The Association of Research Libraries has prepared an Issue Brief on the PRISM coalition and open access advocate Peter Suber has reported extensively on the topic in his blog.