FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 9, 2007

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

Washington, DC - March 9, 2007- SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has reorganized and redesigned its Web site to better serve the scholarly communications community. The site (http://www.arl.org/sparc) has been refined to facilitate access to the multitude of SPARC resources created for libraries, publishers, authors, and the media.

The new Web site provides one-click access to SPARC's major program areas: Advocacy, Education (Publications and Resources), and Incubation (Partners), as well as information on Membership, Meetings & Events, SPARC Consulting services, and the organization itself. There are also direct links to resources by theme (author rights, journal pricing, open access, open data, public access to research, and repositories) and by audience (libraries, authors, publishers, and the media).

The new portals for authors and publishers have been added to highlight SPARC's ongoing role in collaborating across stakeholder groups in scholarly publishing. The author page features SPARC's Author Rights initiative as well as other copyright resources, campus and regional copyright leadership, information on the emergence of policies for access to taxpayer-funded research, and links to publishing alternatives.

SPARC's new publisher portal offers easy access to SPARC's existing guides, planning resources, consulting services, and partner programs as well as links to potentially useful technologies for institutions, societies, or new publishing ventures.

Other key features of the new site include:

• The Advocacy section offers a library-oriented view of emerging policies, including: the Federal Research Public Access Act; the NIH Public Access Policy; and public access in the UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia. There are also issue-specific links to the Alliance for Taxpayer Access for more information.
• Publications have been reorganized to offer two-click access to SPARC brochures, papers, guides, articles, audio and video files, SPARC enews, the SPARC Open Access Newsletter and Forum, and presentations in PDF format.
• New resource sections, including those on open access and repositories, feature articles, available directories, discussion lists, links to supporting organizations, and more.

Visit the new SPARC Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc for easy access to all of SPARC's resources.

Please update your Web sites and scholarly communication pages with these key links:

• SPARC resources on the Federal Research Public Access Act: http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa
• SPARC resources on the NIH Public Access Policy: http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/nih
• SPARC resources for authors: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author
• SPARC resources for publishers: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publisher
• Journal Pricing: http://www.arl.org/sparc/pricing
• Open Access: http://www.arl.org/sparc/openaccess
• Repositories: http://www.arl.org/sparc/repositories
• The SPARC-ACRL Forum: http://www.arl.org/sparc/forum
• Current SPARC Publisher Partners: http://www.arl.org/sparc/partner/partnerlist.html

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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.