University Presses Try to Straddle the Battle Lines in Open-Access Debate

By JENNIFER HOWARD

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE: This winter has been colder than usual in many parts of the country, but in the open-access wars it's been a season of heated rhetoric. In January reports circulated in the journal Nature and in Scientific American that a division of the Association of American Publishers had hired a "pit bull" PR firm to help it respond to the threat posed by open access. Argue that "public access equals government censorship," the flaks reportedly advised.

Then, in February, an