"PRISM – the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine" (http://www.prismcoalition.org) is an anti-open access advocacy organization recently launched with development support from the Association of American Publishers.
From Heather Joseph, SPARC:
"The organization specifically targets efforts to expand public access to federally funded research results – including the National Institute of Health’s Public Access Policy.
"The messaging on the PRISM Web site, which is aimed at key policy makers, directly corresponds to the PR campaign reportedly undertaken by the AAP earlier this year. As Nature reported in January, AAP publishers met with PR 'pit bull' Eric Dezenhall to develop a campaign against the 'free-information movement' that focuses on simple messages, such as 'public access equals government censorship,' and suggested that 'the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review' (http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html). News of this proposed campaign met with immediate and heavy criticism in the academic community. See http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/blogs.html.
"The new PRISM Web site closely tracks with the recommended PR strategy, highlighting messages that include:
- Public access/open access will destroy the peer review system
- Public access equals government censorship
- The government is trying to expropriate publishers’ intellectual property
"This campaign is clearly focused on the preservation of the status quo in scholarly publishing, (along with the attendant revenues), and not on ensuring that scientific research results are distributed and used as widely as possible."
"The reaction to the launch of PRISM by the academic research community has been immediate and quite strong. Of particular note are reactions by these important constituencies:
1) Some publishers have called for the AAP to post a disclaimer on the PRISM Web site, indicating that PRISM does *not* represent their views on the issues of open access and public access. (See the open letter from Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University Press at https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3941.html).
James D. Jordan, president and director of Columbia University Press, resignation from the Executive Council of the AAP’s Professional and Scholarly Publishing division, in protest of PRISM's message. See Chronicle of Higher Education story.
2) Some journal editors have also expressed displeasure with the initiative. For example, Tom Wilson, Editor (and Founder) of the International Journal of Information Management, resigned from that editorial board in protest of Elsevier's involvement with PRISM. (See http://www.free-conversant.com/irweblog/879).
Others, including Peter Murray Rust of the University of Cambridge (UK), have written to publishers with which they are affiliated as author or editor and asked them to take action to publicly disassociate themselves with PRISM. (See http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=525).
3) Researchers are also questioning how their choices may result in unwanted association with PRISM. Some are calling for colleagues to register displeasure over publishers’ involvement with PRISM by reconsidering submitting work, reviewing, or editing for publishers who support the coalition (See http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/smount/2007/08/29/prism-distorts-our-view-of-the-open-access-debate). Others are going even further, calling for a boycott of those publishers (http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2007/08/calling-for-boycott-of-of-aap.html).
