With backing from the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM) is a newly launched campaign, aiming to highlight the threat it perceives from the Open Access model to peer reviewed journals and publishers intellectual property.

Dr. Brian Crawford, chairman of the executive council of AAP’s Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division said, “Peer review has been the global standard for validating scholarly research for more than 400 years and we want to make sure it remains free of unnecessary government interference, agenda-driven research and bad science.”

The campaigners have taken issue with proposals that the US government may force publishers to freely make available articles that were peer-reviewed, published, promoted and distributed by them. This in turn they argue, will weaken protective copyright measures and effectively drive them into giving their intellectual property away.

Proponents of the Open Access model say peer reviewed articles have resulted from government funded research and therefore should be available free of charge.

PRISM hope the new initiative will engage members of the public and policy makers into backing the traditional model over Open Access. The organisation says it wants to; “dispel inaccuracies and counter the rhetorical excesses indulged in by some advocates of Open Access”

Supporters of the PRISM website say it will feature discussion on the sustainability of peer review and the implications of copyright infringement on the academic publishing industry. Commenting on the campaign, Patricia Schroeder, president and CEO of the AAP said, “Only by preserving the essential integrity of the peer-reviewed process can we ensure that scientific and medical research remains accurate, authoritative and free from manipulation and censorship and distinguishable from junk science.”