As a trainee member of the American Physiological Society (APS), I am requesting your support in preserving our Society's ability to provide fellowships,
awards, and training opportunities funded through revenues generated by our Society journals.
As a not-for-profit association, we are mandated by law to reinvest any excess revenue back into the mission of the society.
For APS, we reinvest in trainees and their future development. Our ability to continue to do so is being threatened by Congressional mandates for open access to journals.
A good explanation of the challenges presented by open access publishing can be found in two articles written by Martin Frank, APS
Executive Director, and published in the
New England Journal of Medicine and Physiology.
APS belongs to the DC Principles Coalition for Free Access to Science, a group
of 75 society and university press publishers that are committed to timely
public access to our journals. Societies already provide free access to members,
to institutions through subscriptions, to patients upon request, and to
developing countries through a sustainable subscription model that provides the
society with funds to support trainees. Government-mandated open access has the
potential to reduce our ability to recover publication costs from subscriptions
and forcing authors to pay the full the cost of publications from their research
grants or university funds. This will not only reduce the funds available for
research but the funding available for fellowships from federal agencies. Please
sign the
Statement of Support for Society Publishers if you are concerned about this issue.
Sincerely,
Angela J. Grippo, Ph.D.
Chair, APS Trainee Advisory Committee
Dale J. Benos, Ph.D.
APS President
Martin Frank, Ph.D.
Executive Director, American Physiological Society
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