Coalition expands service to equip digital initiatives with tools for self-sufficiency and success

For immediate release
September 18, 2007

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org

Washington, DC – September 18, 2007 – SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is expanding the SPARC Consulting Group with the addition of well-known advisor and commentator Greg Tananbaum.

Tananbaum is best known for his leadership as recent President of The Berkeley Electronic Press, though also for writing a regular column on emerging developments in scholarly communication for Against the Grain and for his work as past Director of Product Marketing for EndNote. He holds a Master's Degree from the London School of Economics and a B.A. from Yale University. Since leaving The Berkeley Electronic Press in 2006, Tananbaum has offered a range of consulting services at the intersection of technology, content, and academia.

The SPARC Consulting Group (SCG) was formed in 2002 to provide business, financial, and strategic consulting services to universities and university presses, learned societies, and other academic and nonprofit organizations. It supports the development, launch, and operation of scholarly communications projects by helping make them more competitive, financially self-sufficient, and better equipped to serve scholars and the marketplace.

SCG consultants Raym Crow and Howard Goldstein are known for authoring Open Society Institute-sponsored business planning guides on launching or converting to open access journals, as well as individual papers such as “Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper” and “Gaining Independence: A Manual for Launching a Nonprofit Publishing Venture.” SPARC Consulting provides services that include:

• Strategic advice;
• Conceptualization and preparation of business plans;
• Market analysis and marketing plan development;
• Pricing development;
• Financial planning;
• Policy analysis;
• Feature/functionality review and planning; and
• Other services.

The SCG provides access to qualified consultants acting as independent contractors. Consulting services are a client-specific fee-based adjunct to the range of SPARC's existing resources for publishers. Members of the SPARC Consulting Group continue their respective independent activities while engaging with SPARC and its partners on a selective basis.

For more information, visit the SPARC Consulting Group Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc/consult.

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SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC’s advocacy, educational, and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.