For Immediate Release
November 6, 2007

Contacts:

Kara Malenfant
ACRL
kmalenfant@ala.org
(312) 280-2510

Jennifer McLennan
SPARC
jennifer@arl.org
(202) 296-2296 x121

WASHINGTON, DC & CHICAGO - NOVEMBER 6, 2007 - SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), have released interviews and analysis exploring in depth the views of three major open access publishers on the challenges of sustainability. The materials were produced in conjunction with the 15th SPARC-ACRL Forum on Emerging Issues in Scholarly Communication, which took place on June 23, 2007.

The Forum, which is held at every meeting of the American Library Association, offered participants the opportunity to engage in conversation with top executives from the three organizations. Speakers included Mark Patterson, director of publishing for the Public Library of Science; Bryan Vickery, deputy publisher for BioMed Central and Editorial Director for Chemistry Central; and Paul Peters, director of business development for Hindawi Publishing Corporation. Alma Swan of Key Perspectives Ltd., moderated the session. Podcasts and slides from the event are now available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala07.

The new materials offer a deeper level of insight into the three publishers’ business models and include:

• Interviews (in podcast and written formats) with each executive exploring each organization’s approach in detail.
• A matrix comparison of the publishers’ views on 11 aspects of maintaining their operations, including: the financial viability of the company; the basis for charging publication fees; new and traditional impact factors; and the role of institutional memberships in the business model.

These tools for campus outreach were produced for SPARC and ACRL by Alma Swan of Key Perspectives Ltd. and may be downloaded through http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala07.

For more information, visit the SPARC Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc/forum or the ACRL Web site at http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/scholarlycommunication.cfm.

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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/.

ACRL
ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA), representing more than 13,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments.