MELVILLE, NY, 10 February 2009 — Three more scientific society publishers are offering free journal content to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions. The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and, as of this month, AVS (formerly, the American Vacuum Society) are contributing their online research journals to the free trial initiated one year ago by the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP).
“HBCUs typically lack the budgets available to big research institutions and often cannot subscribe to some of the most important research journals in science,” said Quinton Williams, chair of the physics department at Jackson State University and chair of the AIP Committee on Underrepresented Minorities. “So we welcome this initiative from AIP and APS. We are particularly pleased to see other scientific societies joining the effort.”
The project was initiated by the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP), the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP), and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA). AIP and APS established a free trial of their journal content in February 2008 to all HBCUs and other minority-serving academic institutions. Some of these institutions subscribe to a number of AIP and APS journals (and some get none), but none of the institutions currently receives the entire collection of both publishers.
The goal is not only to strengthen science education in the short term, but to find a long-term pricing formula that will allow these institutions to maintain access to this content for the future. AIP and APS originally offered the free trial until the end of 2008 and have since extended the trial through December 31, 2009. Usage data is available to each participating university or college, to help them identify the value of this content for their faculty and students.