This past week, members of the Association of Canadian University Presses / L’Association des presses universitaires canadiennes (ACUP/APUC) circulated a survey to Canadian scholars in an attempt to gain valuable feedback from its list of authors on recently proposed changes to the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program (ASPP).

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At a meeting in June 2019 between the members of ACUP/APUC and several staff members at the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS), the Federation announced a significant change to the current operation of its flagship publication awards program. In short, the Federation indicated that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), who funds the program, was seeking to transition the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program (ASPP) to one that would require all awarded books be published in open access. Although the exact implementation of this open access requirement at the ASPP had not yet been determined, SSHRC advised ACUP/APUC that the policy change would not be accompanied by additional funding.

Such a policy change would affect Canadian university presses, Canadian scholars, and the broader scholarly communications environment in significant ways. In order to ensure that proper consultation was carried out on this important file, ACUP/APUC designed a survey to collect feedback on the proposed policy change and its implementation from those scholars eligible for the program.

The survey, which guarantees the anonymity of its respondents, will close on 23 October 2019.