7 June 1999

Mr. Richard Johnson
SPARC Enterprise Director
21 Dupont Circle, N.W., Suite 800
Washington, DC 20036
USA

Dear Mr. Johnson,

The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) has been following the development of the SPARC initiative with interest since its conception in 1998. Universities in Australia share your concerns over the increasing costs of scholarly journals, coupled with the erosion of university library budgets, which are contributing to the crisis in scholarly communication.

At its meeting on 8 December 1998 the AVCC Board of Directors agreed to endorse the concept of SPARC and to convey its position to you.

Through its Standing Committee on Information Policy, the AVCC is exploring several initiatives which may assist the Australian university community to counteract the effects of the crisis in scholarly communication. In particular, a high level strategic directions paper, addressing ways to build a competitive and sustainable research information infrastructure in Australia, is under consideration; also the AVCC is proposing to revise its Intellectual Property Discussion Paper to incorporate advice to universities on the need to modify the copyright given away by academics to the publishers of research papers. We will continue to monitor the work of SPARC and to circulate information and advice to our member universities on this and other initiatives.

Yours sincerely,T J Mullarvey
Deputy Executive Director
Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee
GPO Box 1142
Canberra ACT 2601
AUSTRALIA
enquiries@avcc.edu.au
http://www.avcc.edu.au/