Open Access

image © Matthew WhiteheadThe next SPARC Open Access Meeting, themed “Convergence,” will convene March 3–4, 2014, in Kansas City. The past year has seen growing momentum in the areas of open access, open data, and open educational resources. As the push for greater openness continues, these three fronts are converging in interesting and potentially transformative ways. Join us as leaders from the library community, academia, industry, student community, and other research avenues discuss how open access, open data, and open educational resources are intersecting, and the impact this convergence might have on research and discovery. The meeting is designed to emphasize collaborative actions that stakeholders can take to positively impact publishing, policy, digital repositories, author rights, and licensing.

On June 11, 2013, five major library associations—ARL, American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), American Library Association (ALA), Medical Library Association (MLA), Special Libraries Association (SLA)—sent this letter to the US Senate Committee on Rules & Administration, supporting President Obama's nomination of Davita Vance-Cooks for Public Printer of the United States. The Public Printer oversees the US Government Printing Office (GPO).

 ltr-lib-assns-support-d-vance-cooks-nom-public-printer-11june2013.pdf

Davita Vance-Cooks, photo courtesy GPOOn June 11, ARL joined the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), American Library Association (ALA), Medical Library Association (MLA), and Special Libraries Association (SLA) in a letter (PDF) to the US Senate Committee on Rules & Administration supporting President Obama's nomination of Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks for Public Printer of the United States. The Public Printer oversees the US Government Printing Office (GPO). If confirmed, Vance-Cooks would be the first woman and first African American to head the GPO.

image © Right to Research CoalitionSPARC’s student initiative, the Right to Research Coalition, has released a video interview of Jack Andraka, a high school sophomore who won the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a breakthrough diagnostic for pancreatic cancer. Interviewed by Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Andraka discusses how open access articles and NIH’s PubMed Central played a key role in enabling his discovery.

The Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and ARL have drafted a proposal in response to the OSTP memo: The SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).

 share-proposal-07june13.pdf

The proposal begins:

Research universities are long-lived and are mission-driven to generate, make accessible, and preserve over time new knowledge and understanding. Research universities collectively have the assets needed for a national solution for enhanced public access to federally funded research output. As the principal producers of the resources that are to be made publicly available under the new White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)[1] memorandum, and that are critical to the continuing success of higher education in the United States, universities have invested in the infrastructure, tools, and services necessary to provide effective and efficient access to their research and scholarship. The new White House directive provides a compelling reason to integrate higher education’s investments to date into a system of cross-institutional digital repositories that will be known as SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE)...

Comments and questions about the draft SHARE proposal (PDF) are welcome—please send e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

image © Niklas WikströmARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) have drafted a proposal, “SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE)” (PDF), in response to the recent White House directive on public access to federally funded research and data.

This spring SPARC published a community resource, Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer (PDF), by Greg Tananbaum. Article-level metrics (ALMs) are rapidly emerging as important tools to quantify how individual articles are being discussed, shared, and used. This SPARC primer provides an overview of what ALMs are, why they matter, how they complement established utilities and metrics, and how they might be considered for use in the tenure and promotion process.  

On May 30, ARL joined the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), American Library Association (ALA), Medical Library Association (MLA), and Special Libraries Association (SLA) in a letter (PDF) to the Committee on House Administration, thanking the committee for rejecting the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recommendation that the US Government Printing Office (GPO) consider charging public user fees for access to government documents via the Federal Digital System (FDsys).

RLI issue 280 includes:

Open Educational Resources as Learning Materials: Prospects and Strategies for University Libraries
Marilyn S. Billings, Sarah C. Hutton, Jay Schafer, Charles M. Schweik, and Matt Sheridan

E-Book Licensing and Research Libraries--Negotiating Principles and Price in an Emerging Market
Charles B. Lowry and Julia C. Blixrud

Research Library Trends: A Historical Picture of Services, Resources, and Spending
Martha Kyrillidou

image © John SchniebelARL, LibQUAL+^®, and SPARC are offering several events at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference to be held in Chicago this summer. Highlights include: 

ARL/LibQUAL+ Booth
Friday, June 28, 5:30 p.m.–Monday, July 01, 2:00 p.m.
(during exhibit hours)
McCormick Place Convention Center, Booth 528