Connections between AAP and ACS

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.

More like this

OK, I know I said that this morning's post would likely be the last post of 2011, but then--wouldn't you know it?--the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism had to go and post a post entitled AAPS on Vaccin
I may have taken a break yesterday, but that doesn't mean I've abandoned my mission to make this Vaccine Awareness Week (or, more properly, the Anti-vaccine Movement Awareness Week, dedicated to countering the lies of the anti-vaccine movement).
I’m always hesitant to write about matters that are more political than scientific or medical, although sometimes the sorts of topics that I blog about inevitably require it (e.g., the 21st Century Cures Act, an act that