In an effort to steer the increasingly contentious discussion about open-access publishing away from polarized debate and toward finding workable solutions, the Association of American University Presses released a statement on Tuesday outlining its perspective on the issue.

The association, a consortium of more than 100 nonprofit scholarly publishers, seeks to expand the conversation, which so far has focused mainly on articles for scientific, technological, and medical journals, to encompass scholarly publishing in the humanities, including monographs.

Presses should consider a variety of models for improving access to scholarly communications, including offering free access to one form of publication and paid access to another, the document says. But it also urges caution. Efforts to make scholarly work freely available are now at a “laboratory stage of experimentation,” it says, warning that plunging into open-access formats without thorough evaluation of a variety of models could pose the risk of disrupting scholarly communication.

Background articles from The Chronicle: Navigating the Big Uneasy (6/30/2006)

New Study Compares Open-Access and Traditional Publishing (3/25/2005)

The Promise and Peril of Open Access (1/30/2004)