SPARC

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2011 Program Plan

What is SPARC?

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is a library membership organization that promotes expanded sharing of scholarship. SPARC believes that faster and wider sharing of outputs of the research process increases the impact of research, fuels the advancement of knowledge, and increases the return on research investments. SPARC is supported by a membership of over 220 academic and research libraries and works in cooperation with its affiliates, SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan.

MISSION

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

STRATEGY

SPARC’s strategy focuses on reducing barriers to the access, sharing, and use of scholarship. Our highest priority is advancing the understanding and implementation of policies and practices that ensure Open Access (OA) to scholarly research outputs. SPARC’s focus to date has been on journal literature, but our evolving strategy reflects an increasing focus on Open Access to research outputs of all kinds – including digital data and Open Educational Resources. SPARC’s work centers on three key program areas:

1. Educating stakeholders about the problems facing scholarly communication and the opportunities for them to play a role in achieving positive change;
2. Advocating policy changes that advance scholarly communication and that explicitly recognize that dissemination of scholarship is an essential, inseparable component of the research process;
3. Incubating demonstrations of new publishing and sustainability models that benefit scholarship and academe.

PRIORITIES

SPARC activities will advance acceptance and long-term sustainability of a more open system of scholarship, with a primary focus on advancing open-access models for publishing and archiving the results of scholarly research. SPARC will promote both the infrastructural and cultural changes needed to make Open Access a norm in scholarly communication.

• Expansion of Campus Communication Resources
  • Update and expand materials that inform faculty about OA
  • Focus on reducing concerns regarding peer review and promotion/tenure
  • Partner to sponsor workshops, immersion programs, and/or fellowships that educate faculty about the benefits of Open Access
  • Create additional business planning/economic modeling materials
  • Promote the Houghton/Swan economic ROI model for OA at the university level to North American higher education institutions
  • Direct student initiative (Right to Research Coalition) to promote OA and OER to faculty as well as students
  • Deploy new, regular SPARC Blog
  • Expanding participation in library professional meetings, leveraging the SPARC network to ensure broad and deep engagement at key events
• Advocacy
  • Continue to lead high-level Open Access advocacy
  • Realign legislative/policy strategy and tactics in response to new Congressional makeup.
  • Ensure deep coalition member participation in Congressional meetings/hearings on public access.
  • Partner with other groups to advise non-profit disease-specific groups on creation and implement open-access policies,
  • Explore interest in and develop strategies for a state-based approach to promoting deposit of state-funded research publications
  • Explore collaboration with OER coalition on emerging policies
• International Outreach
  • Expand and strengthen support for Open Access in key international regions
  • Define strategy for global program expansion, identifying key regions/partners – potentially including: Australia/NZ, South Africa, Brazil/Latin America, India and China)
  • Support the development of international network of SPARC-like affiliates
  • Develop program framework to accelerate the creation of regionally specific Open Access organizations
  • Use biennial SPARC-sponsored meeting as opportunity to coordinate and energize global affiliates
• Academy-based Publishing Outreach and Support
  • Advise new/existing open-access initiatives on sustainability/best practices
  • Develop and distribute resources to encourage sustainability/best practices
  • Partner to support launch and incubation of alternative publishing models among libraries, societies, and university presses
• Establish Biennial North American Open Access Meeting
  • Develop multi-track program to cover publishing, repositories, legal/copyright issues, policies, researcher education, and economics for unified meeting
  • Alternate with OAI meeting in Europe
  • Potentially merge digital repositories meeting into agenda
  • Create natural space for advancing collaboration/education with Open Data, OER and Open Science movement partners

Key Continuing Activities in 2011

Enabling Strategies—SPARC will implement mechanisms for ensuring organizational stability and strength by:

• Promoting member retention and recruitment using marketing review as basis
• Beginning to expand membership into Community and Technical College community.
• Deploying regular internal/external communication highlighting SPARC’s programs
• Continuing “Directors Only” conference calls with scholarly communications thought leaders
• Introducing SPARC members-only events at professional library meetings
• Deepening member engagement in the SPARC network through Web casts, database-based relationship management, and other means

Advocacy/Policy Strategy—SPARC will continue to raise the public policy profile of Open Access through its highly visible initiative to advance public access to the results of federally funded research through:

• Leading advocacy efforts of the OAWG and ATA in educating policymakers on Open Access
• Advocating for expansion of public access policies on Congressional, Executive Branch and individual agency levels
• Deploy strategy to ensure deep coalition member presence/participation in Congressional meetings/hearings on public access
• Increasing community awareness of copyright issues and developing strategies to counter arguments opposing public access on copyright grounds
• Supporting research on social/economic benefits of public access to federally funded research
• Promoting Houghton/Swan economic ROI model for OA at the university level to North American higher education institutions
• Partnering with CARL, SPARC Europe, SPARC Japan, eIFL to advocate for open-access/public access policies among key international organizations
• Continuing to promote and provide support for the adoption of campus-based, faculty-driven openaccess policies
• Working with non-profit disease-specific groups to create and implement open-access policies (HRA, CURES, etc.)
• Assisting in organization of Berlin 9 Open Access conference in the U.S in 2011
• Participating in new OER advocacy coalition to leverage messaging and membership in support of Open Access and OER policies
• Continuing to expand the coalition of support beyond current constituencies

Campus Education—SPARC will enable and deepen libraries’ grassroots advocacy efforts to reach faculty, researchers, and students to educate them on critical issues in scholarly communication by:

• Building on the success of SPARC’s International Open Access Week and expanding partner network to raise awareness and participation
• Co-sponsoring the U.S. and Canadian Create Change program and Web site (www.createchange.org) in collaboration with ACRL, ARL and CARL
• Presenting SPARC’s activities at meetings of library, publishing, university, faculty, student and research organizations in the U.S. and abroad
• Track, update and communicate developments around Campus Open Access Funds
• Expanding SPARC’s public presentation series by identifying, training and publicizing availability of student and other speakers for campus visits
• Continuing sponsorship of the monthly SPARC Open Access Newsletter by Peter Suber, and associated e-mail list
• Continuing SPARC Innovator Series, highlighting key individuals and institutions that successfully promote positive change in the scholarly communications arena
• Continuing to issue SPARC’s monthly enews, to keep the community abreast of news for librarians, students, researchers, and policy makers
• Hosting, in partnership with ACRL, the biannual ALA forum

Student campaign to raise awareness of Open Access and scholarly communication issues—SPARC will assist in enhancing this rapidly growing program by:

• Providing significant resources (both financial and managerial) to ensure the success of the program
• Solidifying and publicizing the “Right to Research” brand through the creation of a new logo and Updated Web presence.
• Seeking additional grant support/partnerships to aggressively explore international expansion of student coalition
• Hosting third annual North American “Student Leadership Summit” to identify current concerns and opportunities to advance the conversation on access to research outputs with students, in collaboration with recognized student leaders
• Expanding SPARC internship program to cover semesters when school is in session in partnership with local DC-area campuses.
• Expanding the suite of educational materials targeted toward students to help students educate their peers
• Hosting the 5th annual SPARKY awards video contest
• Enhancing SPARC’s student blog by recruiting additional authors/editors from SPARC partner organizations in the student space
• Supporting the international expansion of the coalition and its first European “Student Leadership Summit”

International activity—SPARC will continue to play a pivotal role in international developments in scholarly communications and Open Access by:

• Partnering with SPARC Japan and SPARC Europe, and convening regular conversations among key SPARC international leaders
• Collaborating with additional partners, including OSF and eIFL.net to expand the powerful international education and advocacy networks that have been established
• Collaborating with Canadian colleagues via programs with CARL, Synergies, CRKN and the Canadian Open Access Working Group
• Exploring opportunities for SPARC China, India and Brazil/Latin America. An ad-hoc subcommittee of current and past SPARC leaders will create action plan

Open Access Infrastructure Support—SPARC will continue its leadership role in promoting digital repositories and open-access journal outlets by:

• Actively partnering with PLoS, OASPA and other leading OA publishers to promote adoption of open-access journal outlets
• Partnering with DuraSpace, Oracle, BePress, ePrints, and other partners to deploy Web casts on topics of interest to the community
• Identifying opportunities for large-scale international collaborations by repository collectives similar to the SPARC Japan/DRIVER cooperative agreement
• Partnering with the newly formed COAR coalition to identify areas of potential collaboration
• Exploring burgeoning interest by Microsoft and other commercial to promote tools that encourage author rights retention and other mechanisms to ensure Open Access
• Participating in workshops and symposia on data access issues, particularly those sponsored by the NSF, National Academies and Science Commons

Author’s Addendum and Author Rights Campaign—SPARC will continue to support the highly visible Author Rights campaign, by:

• Exploring collaboration with Creative Commons on Legal Primer for Open Access
• Updating and supplementing the 2007 “Open Doors, Open Minds” policy white paper (with partners at Science Commons and Harvard University) and supporting campus policy materials as campus experiences evolve

Publisher Partnership & Incubation Program—SPARC will continue to support and promote useful examples of open-access or other innovative publishing initiatives by:

• Participating in programs highlighting common concerns of the library and not-for-profit publishing communities where collaborative action can benefit the academy
• Exploring and supporting transition strategies for subscription-based publishers to move to openaccess models
• Collaborating with university presses and scholarly societies, leveraging Raym Crow’s examination of current collaborative publishing projects, recently published guide, and Web-based resource for campus-based publishing partnerships
• Developing an overview of open-access monograph initiatives, focusing on financial sustainability models
• Working with societies, university presses, and other non-profit publishing initiatives to develop case studies highlighting successful alternative publishing models for journals, monographs, and other scholarly communication genres
• Promoting broad U.S. and Canada library participation in the SCOAP3 initiative
• Developing a meta-guide and resource for libraries to take fuller advantage of existing SPARC guides in working with potential publishing partners

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