Through a PRISM Darkly

Ho-ho, things are hotting up among the opponents of open access:

The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine (PRISM) was established to protect the quality of scientific research, an issue of vital concern to:

* scientific, medical and other scholarly researchers who advance the cause of knowledge;

* the institutions that encourage and support them;

* the publishers who disseminate, archive and ensure the quality control of this research; and

* the physicians, clinicians, engineers and other intellectual pioneers who put knowledge into action.

Implying, of course, that open access has has no research integrity, does not advance the cause of knowledge, and is somewhow opposed to intellectual pioneers.

This is a really important development, because it is the clearest demonstration yet that the traditional publishers see open access as a real threat, and that it is succeeding - you don't take these kind of measures against something that is flailing. For the best rebuttal of the misleading issues and non-issues raised and obfuscated on this site, see Peter Suber's comments.