Many of our readers will already be familiar with the Federation’s recent initiative to develop an OA policy for its Awards to Scholarly Publications Program (ASPP). The ASPP is a competitive funding program that supports the publication and translation of scholarly books on topics in the humanities and social sciences.
Since last fall, the Federation has been looking at all issues related to OA and book publishing. In the spring, after a period of concerted research and informal discussions with experts and stakeholders, we released a draft policy and requested feedback from the community. This consultation closed on September 18, and we are now carefully considering all the responses we received.
Many important issues were highlighted by the respondents, including general, substantive and technical concerns. We are very grateful for the considered and informed responses we received, which will help us craft a better final policy. We hope to release this final policy in early 2015.
Supporting OA is part of the Federation and the ASPP’s commitment to research that creates new knowledge, encourages innovation, enhances education, and contributes to the well being of society. New research must be communicated effectively and OA is increasingly becoming a key component of the research dissemination process. The Federation actively supports OA, and looks forward to extending this support into the OA publishing of ASPP-funded books.