SPARC

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), launched in 1998 as an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries, is an alliance of 222 academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. These imbalances have driven the cost of scholarly journals (especially in science, technology, and medicine) to insupportably high levels, and have critically diminished the community’s ability to access, share, and use information. At the core of SPARC’s mission is the belief that these imbalances inhibit the advancement of scholarship and are at odds with fundamental needs of scholars and the academic enterprise.

SPARC is a catalyst for action. Its pragmatic agenda focuses on collaborating with other stakeholders to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly communication models that expand dissemination of scholarly research, reduce financial pressures on libraries, and leverage the networked digital environment to advance the conduct of scholarship.

SPARC’s strategy is focused on reducing barriers to the access, sharing, and use of scholarship and, in particular, scientific research. SPARC’s highest priority is advancing the understanding and implementation of open access to research results. While much of SPARC’s focus to date has been on primary journal literature, our strategy reflects an increasing focus on digital data of all kinds.

SPARC’s role in stimulating change centers on three key program areas:

• Educating stakeholders about the problems facing scholarly communication and the opportunities for change;
• Advocating policy changes that advance the potential of technology to advance scholarly communication and that explicitly recognize that dissemination is an essential, inseparable component of the research process;
• Incubating real-world demonstrations of business and publishing models that advance changes benefiting scholarship and academe.

It is critical to SPARC’s ultimate success that programs continue to be vigorously pursued in all three program areas.

SPARC actions will, foremost, advance the viability and acceptance of a more open system of scholarship, with a primary focus on open access models of both publishing and archiving the results of scholarly research. In particular, as interest in public access to the results federally funded research continues to accelerate, SPARC will work to deploy a focused and disciplined advocacy strategy while remaining sufficiently agile to capitalize on emerging market opportunities that align with our objectives.

SPARC’s program activity recognizes that change will play out differently in various disciplines and that, in some areas, the interests of academe may be best served in the near term by affordable subscription-supported publishing solutions. Our programs therefore aim at building a broader understanding of opportunities for change in all fields, and places an emphasis on identifying areas of common advantage to all stakeholders in the scholarly communications community.

Reviewed below are the key program activities planned for 2007:

Advocacy/Public policy strategy – SPARC’s highly visible public policy initiative to advance public access to the results of federally funded research will be expanded to further raise the public profile of open access in the U.S., as well as internationally:

• SPARC will continue to lead and manage the policy advocacy work of the Open Access Working Group (OAWG), a growing, informal alliance of leading organizations that support open access.[1] Similarly, SPARC will continue to serve as the organizational focal point for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), a letterhead alliance that brings together the OAWG communities with patient advocacy organizations, consumer groups, other interested organizations.
• SPARC will work to maintain the steady growth of the coalition, with a particular emphasis on national higher education organizations, student groups, and researcher coalitions. SPARC will work closely with partner organizations (most notably the Public Library of Science) to develop and deploy advocacy and training events within the scientific and scholarly community.
• To further support the education and participation of student groups, SPARC expects to partner with the group freeculture.org, to create and support a Web site dedicated to student education and advocacy of open access/public access.
• In 2007, we expect OAWG/ATA activity will focus on supporting a number of legislative and policy proposals promoting the adoption of positive government-wide policies on public access to published results of publicly funded research, including the Federal Research Public Access Act, as well as the NIH Public Access Policy.
• OAWG/ATA work is supported by a public policy consulting firm retained and supervised by SPARC, and will be closely managed to ensure that activities undertaken by this firm track SPARC’s focused objectives.
• SPARC will attend and, where appropriate, actively participate in national advisory committee meetings where public access policies are discussed, including the PubMed Central National Advisory Committee, the Public Access Working Group of the National Library of Medicine, the PubChem Working Group, CENDI, and other relevant groups.
• SPARC is well-positioned as an expert source on the issue of public access, and will continue to actively and frequently communicate with reporters as they gather sources for articles.
• An active series of public presentations on SPARC’s advocacy activities will continue, with numerous invited presentations at meetings of both library and publishing organizations in the U.S. and abroad already on the schedule. SPARC will focus on promoting the relevance and importance of open access, as well as on sharing information on advocacy strategy and program planning with related library and scholarly groups worldwide.
• SPARC will continue direct sponsorship of the monthly SPARC Open Access Newsletter, written by Peter Suber, and associated e-mail list, as well as the bimonthly SPARC e-news. The support of SPARC and the Open Society Institute also will continue to make possible Suber’s Open Access News blog, which has become a widely consulted and well-respected news source for those tracking open access and scholarly communications generally.
• SPARC will also explore the possibilities for implementing and administering an open access wiki, ideally in collaboration with a number of operating partners.

Institutional repositories – SPARC will expand and continue to maintain the content-rich SPARC resource on institutional repositories (www.arl.org/sparc/repos/index.html).

• SPARC expects to develop and distribute an educational campaign around the potential for Institutional Repositories to help re-shape the scholarly communication environment. We anticipate following the general template of our “Open Access” and “Author Rights” campaigns – with brochures, supporting Web-based material, and a series of public presentations highlighting IR-related issues.

• In 2007, SPARC will co-sponsor (along with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, The University of Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech) “Open Repositories 2007, “ a meeting focusing on the emerging roles that Institutional Repositories are playing in the scholarly world. SPARC will also begin the planning process for the 2nd SPARC US Institutional Repositories meeting, slated to be held in Washington DC in early 2008.

• As the discussion surrounding Institutional Repositories evolves from issues surrounding their establishment and launch to issues central to identifying and adding content, SPARC will work to advance the understanding of the role that data, and policies surrounding access to data, plays in scholarly communications.

• SPARC will continue to work with Peter Murray-Rust to foster ongoing interest and discussion on issues surrounding data in our online “SPARC Open Data” discussion list.

• We will continue to attend and participate in workshops and symposia on data access issues, particularly those sponsored by the NSF, National Academies and Science Commons.

Identifying Issues of “Common Cause” with Scholarly Societies – SPARC will work to identify and participate in programs that specifically highlight areas of common concern to the library and not-for-profit scholarly society communities where collaborative action can be beneficial to academe. As a start, SPARC will actively support a new NISO-backed effort on creating Alternatives to Licenses, designed to develop a set of mutually agreed upon “Best Practices” that can be used as a substitute for traditional time- and resource-consuming license agreements.

SPARC Author Addendum and Author Rights Campaign –To support the recently launched and highly visible Author Rights Campaign, SPARC will deploy a variety of publicity activities to promote widespread adoption and use of our author’s addendum. In conjunction with ARL and ACRL, 2-3 additional campus Webcasts will be held. We will also actively pursue collaboration with higher education associations to identify areas in which we can jointly encourage authors to adopt use of the addendum.

SPARC will work with Science Commons to collect and actively communicate data on the use of the SPARC addendum, and also as actively solicit responses to the addenda from authors and publishers.

International activity – Because change in scholarly communications is needed on a system-wide, global scale, SPARC will continue to seek to amplify its impact by working in collaboration with global allies such as SPARC Europe, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, and various national and regional university library associations.

• In partnership with the Japan Association of National and University Libraries and the NII, SPARC celebrated the launch of SPARC Japan in the December 2006. In 2007, a full range of promotional activities will be deployed in support of this launch. SPARC now has representation on the governing board of SPARC Japan, and expects that a close cooperative relationship and full slate of collaborative activities will develop among SPARC, SPARC Europe, and SPARC Japan.

• We will begin to explore opportunities for additional international ventures, and examine options for operating models that can accommodate more robust global activity in the future.

• As open access activities grow in scope and importance in developing countries, SPARC will identify and collaborate with additional appropriate partners, including OSI and eIFL.net.

• To raise the profile of libraries as a key stakeholder in policy decisions that affect the communication of research results, SPARC will re-apply for observer status to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Antitrust issues in journal publishing – SPARC will continue to actively participate in the Information Access Alliance, a group of library organizations working to highlight the budgetary impact of the rapid escalation of the price of information, particularly of journals in science, technology, and medicine. SPARC will support and promote activities of the IAA designed to seek new solutions to the problems associated with publisher bundling practices, and help to support the work of economists and antitrust scholars interested in looking at an area where unrestrained concentration is rapidly developing.

Economics of Open Access – SPARC has partnered with SPARC Europe to develop the specifications for a high-level cost/benefit economic analysis of open access, with an emphasis on the potential benefits of open access to national economies. In 2007, we will work towards securing funding for the larger project, which is expected to take 12-18 months to complete.

SPARC Innovator Series – Following the successful launch of this new program, which highlights the efforts of key individuals and institutions in successfully promoting positive change in the scholarly communications arena, SPARC will identify and profile two additional key players in 2007.

Publisher partnership programs – SPARC will support, demonstrate, and promote useful examples of open access or selected other innovative publishing initiatives via the SPARC Alternative, Leading Edge, and Scientific Communities publishing partnership programs.

• SPARC will work to re-define its Leading Edge and Alternative programs to begin to highlight alternative forms of widely available scholarship – i.e., researcher-driven subject-specific blogs, wikis, etc.
• As part of this effort, SPARC will work to draw attention to the importance of institutions (universities, funding agencies, etc.) actively supporting/rewarding ventures that place a premium on open accessibility of scholarship.
• SPARC will formalize an agreement with the American Astronomical Society to support and promote a robust, community-based venture designed to illustrate an end-to-end open system of data-driven scholarship.
• With ICOLC and SOLINET, we will support efforts by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to build an endowment sufficient to sustain perpetual open access publication.
• Via promotional and other activity (including service on advisory boards), SPARC will continue to aid both BioOne (www.bioone.org) and Cornell University’s Project Euclid (projecteuclid.org) in evolving sound, sustainable business practices needed to become leading platforms for digital dissemination of independent journals.

Campus education – SPARC encourages and aids libraries’ grassroots advocacy efforts, co-sponsoring the newly revamped Create Change program and Web site (www.createchange.org) and collaborating with ACRL and other organizations to engage beyond the SPARC membership. In 2007, this campaign (Web site and printed material) will be regularly updated to reflect a more faculty-focused approach.

Other SPARC activities will support institutionally based scholarly communication programs directed at faculty and administrators in higher education:

• Development and presentation of Webcasts and in-person roundtables on topics such as copyright issues for journal articles authors and the future of society publishing.
• Continued support of one-quarter of Julia Blixrud’s time to serve as a consultant to and speaker at local scholarly communication programs.

Business consulting services – We will continue to make available SPARC-subsidized expert advisory services to deserving journals and alternative publishing ventures in 2007. In 2006, nearly twenty publishing organizations used this service, and we expect to work with a similar number of groups in 2007.

Publishing tools – SPARC will explore the addition of tools to its growing arsenal of practical aids to innovative journal publishing practice, including a series of self-help resources on sound business planning practices for small independent publishing initiatives.

SPARC is supported by a membership of more than 220 libraries, mainly in North America and reaching beyond the ranks of ARL member libraries. In addition, several major library organizations around the world are SPARC affiliate members. The allied SPARC Europe organization comprises more than 100 additional members and is entirely self-supporting. SPARC Japan represents 600 libraries, bringing the SPARC global membership to over 800 academic and research libraries.

SPARC operates under the administrative umbrella and not-for-profit status of ARL. SPARC funds are administered on SPARC’s behalf by ARL and are accounted for separately from ARL funds. SPARC pays ARL a negotiated annual fee for administrative services and office space provided by ARL. SPARC receives no ARL financial support.

The SPARC Executive Director, who reports to the ARL Executive Director, manages the affairs of the coalition with guidance from a twelve-member SPARC Steering Committee that is broadly representative of all SPARC member institutions. In 2007, we will explore the feasibility of adding non-library representatives to the Committee; specifically, we’ll look at adding 1-2 active researchers to the group. Members of the 2007 Steering Committee are (term expiration dates in parentheses):

• Ray English, Oberlin College (12/08), Chair
• Larry Alford, Temple University (12/08)
• Nancy Baker, University of Iowa (12/07)
• Sherrie Bergman, Bowdoin College (12/08)
• Deb Carver, University of Oregon (12/07)
• Gwendolyn Ebbett, University of Windsor (12/07)
• Diane Graves, Trinity University (12/08)
• John Ober, University of California (12/08)
• Joyce Ogburn, University of Utah (12/07)
• Carolynne Presser, University of Manitoba (12/07)
• Sarah Pritchard, Northwestern University (12/08)
• Bas Savenije, Utrecht University (12/07)

Income –SPARC operations are supported mainly by membership dues, which increased by a modest amount (4%) in 2007 for the first time since SPARC was founded in 1998. A small amount of additional income is secured from interest on cash-on-hand. SPARC expects that its overall membership base and income will remain stable in 2007.

Expenses –It is expected that 2007 SPARC annual revenue and expenses will continue be approximately in balance (i.e., no material deficit or surplus).

________________________________

1. Current OAWG participants include American Association of Law Libraries, Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Creative Commons, Free Culture, the Greater Western Library Alliance, the Medical Library Association, Open Society Institute, Public Knowledge, Public Library of Science, Science Commons, and SPARC.