Atlantis Press Endorses STM’s Voluntary Principles for Article Sharing on Scholarly Collaboration Networks

Atlantis Press is now an endorsing organization of the STM Association’s Voluntary Principles for Article Sharing on Scholarly Collaboration Networks. These principles aim to allow publishers and scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) to work together to facilitate sharing, which benefits researchers, institutions, and society as a whole.

Scholarly research is by its nature collaborative. Teams of researchers and scientists in the academic and not-for-profit sectors share experience, expertise, and facilities in order to advance human knowledge and understanding. Nowhere is this more evident than in the sharing of scholarly articles, the majority of which include multiple authors, often from different institutions and countries. Sharing of articles and supplementary material is thus an important factor in advancing research. However, the ways in which scholarly information is delivered and consumed is rapidly evolving. As the use of sharing networks grows, the ambiguity over how to access, share and use journal articles on platforms and tools like SCNs has become apparent. Although some publishers have previously made independent statements about SCNs, the STM Association believes that the best approach to finding common ground on this issue is through a wide and far-reaching consultative process. As all parties across the community – researchers, libraries, SCNs and publishers alike – seek clarity on these issues, the time has come to start this type of inclusive dialogue as a springboard for further progress.

The signatories to the STM principles believe that:

• Publishers have a core commitment to facilitate the dissemination and discovery of their authors’ scholarly articles.
• Sharing should be allowed within research collaboration groups.
• Publishers and libraries should be able to measure the amount and type of sharing, using standards such as COUNTER, to better understand the habits of their readers and quantify the value of the services they provide.
• Initiatives to facilitate sharing should (i) be based on standards to support the tools and platforms required by researchers; (ii) be open to all participants supporting the principles; (iii) integrate access and usage rights and data reporting into research workflows; and (iv) ensure that usage and activity data is managed in a manner consistent with personal privacy and security laws and requirements.
• Public posting of article metadata and open access articles in SCNs should be encouraged.
• Publisher policies on research collaboration group sharing and public posting of articles should be clear and easily discoverable.

At the time of writing this article, Atlantis Press was the 60th signatory to the STM’s Voluntary Principles for Article Sharing on Scholarly Collaboration Networks. For more information, please visit http://www.howcanishareit.com/.

Atlantis Press (https://www.atlantis-press.com) is a global open access publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) content which was founded in Paris in 2006 and which currently has offices in Paris, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Beijing. The company’s mission is to support the advancement of scientific, technical and medical research by contributing to a more efficient and effective dissemination and exchange of knowledge both for the research community and society at large. The Atlantis Press content platform currently contains more than 75,000 published articles which are all open access and hence freely accessible.