Alex Palazzo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at The University of Toronto.
OK here is some background.
AAP: American Association of Publishers.
They are behind PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine), a lobby against Open Access (OA). This organization was set up based on suggestions from Eric Dezenhall, a lobbyist has worked for Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling and ExxonMobil.
ACS: American Chemical Society. This non-profit professional association was founded in 1876 and has approximately 160,000 members who work in academic and industrial labs. ACS publishes several journals including JACS and the newsletter C&EN.
Of course ACS, is a member of AAP. Several AAP members, such as Nature Publishing Group and Rockefeller University Press, have publicly opposed AAP's anti-OA position. However ACS has sided with AAP.
Well It turns out that the links between AAP and ACS are quite extensive. As a letter that has been circulating around several science blogs points out
The position of the AAP was developed by Brian Crawford, who is chairman of their scholarly division. Brian Crawford is also head of publishing at ACS.
To read the full letter, go see PZ's post.
So is the ACS representing the interest of its members? Is it speaking for the interest of its management whose salary is in part tied to the profitability of the association's publications? One thing is for sure, ACS and AAP are speaking from the same mouth. In some sense this fact is not a big deal, but I just thought you would like to know this information.
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