ALPSP Gets It All Wrong

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) — let that name sink in a moment . . . I’ll wait . . . “Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers” — recently posted a promotion for a webinar with this description:

There is an increasing diversity of preprint offerings, publishing models and increasing uptake across more disciplines. There have been recent preprinting mandates from research funders such as Gates Foundation, indicating that preprints are vitally important in Open Research publishing. Given the growth of preprint output and its associated challenges, there is now greater focus on the research integrity of preprints (such as assigning trust markers), the peer review of preprints, and what preprinting means for disciplines where they are not traditionally embedded in current practice. This webinar will look at the latest developments in these areas and what the speakers anticipate the future trajectories will be.

Let’s see who this privileges, and contemplate the implications.