SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced the launch of SPARC Japan, a collaboration of Japanese academic institutions and scholarly societies working to promote and make widely available the work of Japanese researchers. SPARC Japan (http://www.nii.ac.jp/sparc/) is an initiative of the Tokyo-based National Institute of Informatics (NII), a national research institute which unites Japanese academic librarians, scholars, researchers, universities and learned societies to support initiatives that improve scholarly communications in Japan.