Scholarly Societies: It's time to abandon the AAP over The Research Works Act

"The AAP/PSP membership includes many scholarly societies: American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Institute of Physics, Association for Computing Machinery, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, Inc., Optical Society of America and many others. These societies will certainly have among their vision and mission statements something about advancing the common good, promoting the scholarly work of their membership and scholarship in their fields as a whole. To my mind, The Research Works Act is directly opposed to those goals. The AAP/PSP has long reflected a stark divide between the large commercial publishers and the supposedly more noble and altruistic scholarly societies. The divide has now become too wide, the cognitive dissonance for those on the sidelines too jarring. Scholarly societies -- it is now time for you to walk away. Leave the AAP and chart your own course...."