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

ARL has published Research Library Issues (RLI) no. 280, which features articles on open educational resources (OERs) as an alternative to traditional textbooks, ARL's e-book licensing effort, and research library trends as shown by the ARL Statistics. A pre-publication version of the article about OERs was released earlier this year.

The complete table of contents with links to the articles follows:

image © Tom LohdanThis week, the National Research Council (NRC) is hosting four days of discussion on the recent White House memo, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research” (PDF). NRC is conducting these sessions to garner input from a wide variety of perspectives on behalf of many federal agencies. ARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) presented joint statements on “Expanded Public Access to Data” (PDF) and “Expanded Public Access to Publications” (PDF).

The Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries presented a joint statement on expanded public access to data to the National Research Council at the National Academy of Science Forum on May 16, 2013.

 univ-lib-statement-public-access-data-16may13.pdf

The Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries presented a joint statement on expanded public access to publications to the National Research Council at the National Academy of Science Forum on May 14, 2013.

 univ-lib-statement-public-access-publications-14may13.pdf

image © Tom LohdanToday President Obama signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to make government data more accessible to the public. Under the terms of the Executive Order, "Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information," a new Open Data Policy (PDF) released today establishes a framework to help agencies implement the principles of effective information management throughout the data life cycle to promote interoperability and openness. Whether or not particular information can be made public, agencies can apply this framework to all information resources to promote efficiency and produce value.

On February 22, 2013, John P. Holdren, Director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, issued a memorandum directing federal research funding agencies with R&D budgets of $100 million or more to develop a plan within six months to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the federal Government.

ARL today joined major sponsors Public Library of Science (PLOS), Wellcome Trust, and Google to launch the Accelerating Science Award Program (ASAP), which recognizes the use of scientific research, published through open access, that has led to innovations in any field that benefits society.

image © Tom LohdanToday the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and Association of Research Libraries (ARL) released a two-page statement by David E. Shulenburger calling on the research university community to provide input to the US Government for increasing access to the results of federally funded research.

On April 17, 2013, the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and Association of Research Libraries (ARL) released this two-page statement by David E. Shulenburger calling on the research university community to provide input to the US Government for increasing access to the results of federally funded research.

 expanded-public-access-a-new-era-with-new-challenges-15apr13.pdf

image © MorBCNARL has released a pre-publication version of an article on “Open Educational Resources as Learning Materials: Prospects and Strategies for University Libraries,” which will be featured in the forthcoming Research Library Issues (RLI) no. 280.

image © Tom Lohdan Today, the Obama administration issued a historic Policy Memorandum that opens up access to the results of publicly funded research. ARL applauds the Obama administration for this critically important action. The memorandum calls upon federal agencies with annual research and development budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with free and unlimited online access to the results of that research.

Research libraries have a responsibility to make library collections and services universally accessible to their patrons. And as research libraries provide more content electronically to students, faculty members, researchers, and others, the role of libraries and other partners in their institutions and beyond is changing in the provision of information resources and services to patrons with disabilities.

print-disabilities-tfreport02nov12.pdf

Proceedings of the 160th ARL Membership Meeting, May 2012.

mm12sp-raina.pdf

Presented at the 158th ARL Membership Meeting, May 2011.

mm11sp-stein.pdf

Presented at the 158th ARL Membership Meeting, May 2011.

mm11sp-berlin.mp3

RLI issue 274 includes:

• The Future of the US Research University
• Joining in the Enterprise of Response in the Wake of the NSF Data Management Planning Requirement

RLI issue 273 includes:

• Three Key Public Policies for Research Libraries: Net Neutrality, Fair Use, Open and Public Access
• The Importance of Net Neutrality to Research Libraries in the Digital Age
• Challenges in Employing Fair Use in Academic and Research Libraries
• Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Contributions to Economic Development, Competitiveness, and Innovation

RLI issue 270 includes:

• Celebrating 10 Years of ARL’s Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce
• ETDs and Graduate Education: Programs and Prospects
• Urban Copyright Legends
• Open Access Week: Library Strategies for Advancing Change

EDUCAUSE, the American Library Association, and the Association of Research Libraries applaud your "third way" proposal to ensure that students, educators, and the general public can benefit from broadband services.

lt-genachowski-broadband-plan-10may10.pdf

RLI issue 269 includes:

• Strategies for Opening Up Content: Laying the Groundwork for an Open System of Scholarship
• Achieving Consensus on the University of Kansas Open-Access Policy
• Improving Access with Open-Access Publishing Funds
• Model Language for Author Rights in Library Content Licenses
• Opening Up Content in HathiTrust: Using HathiTrust Permissions Agreements to Make Authors’ Work Available