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News & MediaRecent News Stories
If Harvard Can’t Afford Academic Journal Subscriptions, Maybe It’s Time for an Open Access Model
From Times Magazine (April 26, 2012)
Life after Elsevier: making open access to scientific knowledge a reality
From The Guardian (April 24, 2012) >> More SPARC In the News SPARC representatives are available to discuss and offer comments on: the Federal Research Public Access Act; taxpayer access to publicly funded research; open access; copyright issues and author rights; and scholarly communication issues, including those related to academic journals and pricing. We can also put you in touch with library directors who are SPARC members in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. For contacts, visit our Staff page or contact: Andrea Brusca Higginbotham, SPARC Communications Manager, SPARC - andrea [at] arl [dot] org or (202) 296-2296 ext 121. Recent Announcements & Site Updates:
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May 23, 2012
White House Petition on Open Access to Research Speeding Along- 12,500 Signatures in 2 ½ Days A community-driven petition calling for the Obama Administration to open up the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research by making journal articles freely available online has opened remarkably strong. The petition, which calls for Public Access to all Federally Funded Research, was posted to the White House "We the People" website just two and half days ago, with the aim of securing 25,000 signatures within 30 days.
May 23, 2012
A Petition for Free Online Access of Taxpayer-funded Research Samuel Arbesman, Wired, May 22, 2012 Many scientific papers are locked away behind paywalls. But the federal government pays for nearly all of this research! So not only should we have access to it in order to allow science to build upon itself, but as a citizenry we have paid for this research and should be able to access it.
May 22, 2012
US Petition Could Tip the Scales in Favour of Open Access Publishing Mike Taylor, The Guardian, May 22, 2012 A petition urges President Obama to implement open access for all federally funded research. This is our chance to demonstrate public support and goad the White House into action
May 22, 2012
ACRL Urges Librarians to Sign Research Access Petition The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has urged librarians and other interested parties to sign a petition calling for public access to all federally funded research, which was posted on the White House’s “We the People” website on May 21. If the petition gets 25,000 signatures within 30 days, it will be considered for action by the White House staff.
May 21, 2012
Sign the White House Petition on Open Access to Research Today! We now have a brief, critical window of opportunity to demonstrate that we as a community firmly believe should be a high priority for the Administration to act on right now. To help accomplish this, today, May 21st, a petition calling for Public Access to all Federally Funded Research has been posted to the White House's "We the People" Website. If the petition garners 25,000 signatures within 30 days, it will be reviewed by White House staff, and considered for action.
May 18, 2012
The Government Spends Billions on Research. Should we have to pay $20,000 more to see the results? Suzy Khimm, The Washington Post, May 18, 2012 Taxpayers fund a ton of government research — and the results can get stuck behind a paywall that tops $20,000. Should they be able to see them without paying a second time around?
May 17, 2012
Pushing the Frontier of Access for Text Mining: A Conversation with Heather Piwowar on One Researcher’s Attempt to Break New Ground As the academic community struggles to ensure that research articles become more accessible than ever before, a new front in the battle is brewing – a battle to ensure that the information in those articles can also be fully used in the digital research environment. In particular, researchers increasingly expect that once they have legitimate access to an article (either through an Open Access model or a subscription model), they should be able to process – or “text mine” – the contents of that article to help further their research. However, this is far from easy to accomplish, as University of British Columbia (UBC) postdoctoral student Heather Piwowar recently discovered when she attempted to do just that. It all began with a simple comment on Twitter. In the face of boycotts and bad publicity, are publishers realizing they must loosen their tight grip on usage restrictions as well?
May 17, 2012
SPARC Interviews Heather Piwowar: Pushing the Frontier on Text Mining As the academic community struggles to ensure that research articles become more accessible than ever before, a new front in the battle is brewing – a battle to ensure that the information in those articles can also be fully used in the digital research environment. In particular, researchers increasingly expect that once they have legitimate access to an article (either through an Open Access model or a subscription model), they should be able to process – or “text mine” – the contents of that article to help further their research. However, this is not easy to accomplish, as University of British Columbia (UBC) postdoctoral student Heather Piwowar recently discovered when she attempted to do just that.
May 16, 2012
Open Access Spreads to Miami University Beverly Goldberg, American Libraries, May 16, 2012 The librarians of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, joined the ranks of the worldwide open-access (OA) movement May 14 by voting to make their scholarly articles freely available in the university’s institutional repository, the Scholarly Commons. Based on Harvard University’s model policy, MU’s open-access principles take effect immediately and make the libraries the first department on Miami’s campus to successfully pass an open access policy.
May 16, 2012
I Can No Longer Work for a System that Puts Profit Over Access to Research Winston Hide, Guardian News, May 16, 2012 The associate editor of Genomics says its publisher Elsevier effectively denies developing world access to research findings.
May 15, 2012
12th ACM/IEEE-Computer Society Joint Conference on Digital Libraries Registration Don't forget to register and book your hotel room for the 12th ACM/IEEE-Computer Society Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2012). JCDL 2012, this year's premiere international conference on all things related to digital libraries, is only a month away. The program is loaded with a rich corpus of papers, posters, and demonstrations, and the conference is open to all. More information is available from the conference website, including links to the registration form, hotel reservations pages, travel tips, and a full schedule of events.
May 14, 2012
What the Bank's Open Access Policy Means for Development - Liveblog & webcast The panel, moderated by World Bank Publisher Carlos Rossel, will answer these questions and address the challenges, successes, pitfalls and benefits other institutions experienced when they made similar game-changing decisions. Featuring: Peter Suber - Director of the Harvard Open Access Project and a leading voice in the open access movement Michael Carroll - American University law professor and founding board member of Creative Commons Cyril Muller - Vice President for External Affairs at the World Bank Adam Wagstaff - Research Manager of the World Bank's Development Research Group.
In Advocacy
May 21, 2012
Sign the White House Petition on Open Access to Research Today! We now have a brief, critical window of opportunity to demonstrate that we as a community firmly believe should be a high priority for the Administration to act on right now. To help accomplish this, today, May 21st, a petition calling for Public Access to all Federally Funded Research has been posted to the White House's "We the People" Website. If the petition garners 25,000 signatures within 30 days, it will be reviewed by White House staff, and considered for action.
May 16, 2012
Open Access Spreads to Miami University Beverly Goldberg, American Libraries, May 16, 2012 The librarians of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, joined the ranks of the worldwide open-access (OA) movement May 14 by voting to make their scholarly articles freely available in the university’s institutional repository, the Scholarly Commons. Based on Harvard University’s model policy, MU’s open-access principles take effect immediately and make the libraries the first department on Miami’s campus to successfully pass an open access policy.
May 3, 2012
Podcast with Nick Shockey: Open Access and Psychology Students Nick Shockey, the Director of the Right to Research Coalition, hosted a workshop for psychology students attending the annual EFPSA Congress in Denmark last week. The workshop was attended by over 30 congress participants including the newly elected EFPSA President, Dalya Samur. It covered topics ranging from what Open Access is to how students can get involved in advocating Open Access at their universities and national and international organizations.
February 29, 2012
Next Steps in Public Access: Tell your Representatives to Support FRPAA While the RWA and its damaging implications is no longer an immediate threat, action is still needed to cement stronger footing for public access on Capitol Hill. Education on and support for The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) is now more important than ever.
February 9, 2012
Call to action: Tell Congress you support the Bipartisan Federal Research Public Access Act (H.R. 4004 and S. 2096)
February 28, 2012
The Impact of Open Access on Research and Scholarship SPARC's Executive Director, Heather Joseph's, College & Library Research News article reflects on the Berlin 9 Conference.
February 27, 2012
Gulf on Open Access to Federally Financed Research Guy Gugliotta, The New York Times, February 27, 2012
February 27, 2012
Legislation to Bar Public-Access Requirement on Federal Research Is Dead Jennifer Howard, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 27, 2012
February 21, 2012
AAU-APLU Support FRPAA: Letter to Cornyn The Association of American Universities and The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities write to Senator Cornyn to thank him for the introduction of FRPAA S. 2096 and to support the bill.
February 18, 2012
SPARC's Executive Director, Heather Joseph, on NPR's "On the Media" Listen to Joseph discuss recent backlash against Elsevier and The Research Works Act. Other commentators add to discussion of the Open Access movement. In Partners
July 12, 2011
Public Knowledge Project Announces Third International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference The third International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference will be held from September 26 - 28, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. The theme for the conference is "Building and Sustaining Alternative Scholarly Publishing Projects Around the World."
June 29, 2011
Project Euclid receives 2011 PAM Division award Project Euclid, jointly managed by Cornell University Library and Duke University Press, received the 2011 Division Award from the Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics (PAM) Division of the Special Libraries Association.
June 21, 2011
ALA names PLoS one of the best free reference sites of 2011 The Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of ALA announced its selection of the top reference sites of 2011. In Publications
April 24, 2012
You've signed on to the Boycott, now what? In light of the recent, failed attempt to abridge access to scholarly articles via the Research Works Act (RWA), a growing number of researchers have expressed their frustration with the status quo in scholarly publishing, and are interested in learning about concrete actions that they can take to effect positive change. SPARC has prepared this resource for our members, to help you to engage your faculty and researchers, and talk with them about options for taking such action.
April 23, 2012
Now Online: Peter Binfield Webcast on Article Level Metrics On April 12, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS One, gave an in-depth look at the the current status of Article Level Metrics, a discussion of what has been learned to date, and a glimpse into what is on the horizon for their further development and wider adoption.
April 12, 2012
Peter Binfield's Webcast Slides on Article Level Metrics Will be posting the recording shortly, but here are Peter's slides.
April 17, 2012
Signed Boycott, Now what? Over the past few months, there has been a growing number of scholars on our campuses who have signed onto or expressed support for the actions called for in the boycott statement on the "Cost of Knowledge" website. SPARC has prepared a “suggested next steps” resource. These are meant to provide suggestions for helping to support the conversion of sentiments surrounding the boycott into constructive, tangible action that can help re-shape the current scholarly communication system.
March 21, 2012
Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success: Final Research Report (March 2012) This report presents the finding of a project which investigated the extent to which publishing has now become a core activity of North American academic libraries and suggested ways in which further capacity could be built. The research described (consisting of a survey, some case studies, three workshops, and a set of further reading recommendations) was mainly conducted between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011.
December 5, 2011
December '11 Issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter Peter Suber and Caroline Sutton inventory open access journals from society publishers.
September 5, 2011
September '11 Issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter Ten years after 9/11, Peter Suber reflects on the problem of access to dangerous knowledge.
September 5, 2011
Access to dangerous knowledge: reflections on 9/11 ten years later From Peter Suber's September 2011 Issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter In Partnering
November 1, 2011
Publishing Services a Major Growth Area for Academic Libraries, Suggests New Research Report Publishing services provided by libraries are expanding and professionalizing, suggests a new report released for comment today by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, on behalf of a team of researchers from the libraries of Purdue University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Utah. The report is the result of a year-long study of library publishing services made possible by a collaborative planning grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), with additional support from Berkeley Electronic Press and Microsoft Research.
July 13, 2011
Pacific University Library and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Library Launch Scholarly Communications Journal A joint publishing partnership between the libraries at Pacific University (Ore.) and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo has announced a new open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to library-led scholarly communication initiatives, online publishing and digital projects.
June 17, 2011
Libraries Offer Tools and Support for Open-Access Publishing From Duke University Libraries
April 20, 2011
Speakers for IMLS-sponsored Library Publishing Services Workshops Announced The roster of invited speakers and participants for the IMLS-funded Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success workshops has been finalized. Each workshop will feature 5 focused topics with 3 panel speakers each. The workshops are scheduled for three consecutive weeks this May on the campuses of the Georgia Institute of Technology (May 4-6), the University of Utah (May 11-13), and Purdue University (May 18-20).
June 23, 2009
Practical Advice on Bridging the Library-Press Divide Meredith Benjamin, The Exchange Online, June 11, 2009
June 16, 2009
Open Access Membership: Reporting tool brings convenience and control Following the recent rapid growth of institutional Memberships for open access publications, innovative publisher BioMed Central announces the introduction of the "Online Reporting System" for its open access Prepay and Postpay Membership accounts.
June 10, 2009
PLoS Progress Report, June 2009 [PDF] The Public Library of Science releases their progress report detailing their current financial statement, impressive statistics and more.
June 9, 2009
Index of campus-based publishing partnerships - now online The Scholarly Communication Program, based at Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, now offers an index of campus-based publishing partnerships. The index employs framework and data from "Campus-based publishing partnerships: A guide to critical issues" by Raym Crow, and is part of the Campus-based Publishing Resource Center organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
April 3, 2009
U-M redefining scholarly publications in the digital age U-M Press refocuses on disseminating ideas, adding authors, printing on demand. From the UMich News service, Mar. 23, 2009. In Pricing
September 29, 2011
Peers, review your actions By Michael Taylor, from the Times Higher Education, September 29, 2011
September 29, 2011
UK government announces working group on research transparency By Peter Mansell, from PharmaTimes Online, September 15, 2011
September 29, 2011
Peace talks on a pressing matter By John Gill, from the Times Higher Education, September 29, 2011
September 15, 2011
Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist Opinion by George Monbiot from The Guardian (UK)
April 19, 2011
Periodicals Price Survey 2011: Under Pressure, Times Are Changing By Stephen Bosch, Kittie Henderson, & Heather Klusendorf, from Library Journal online
February 1, 2011
Nature's open-access offering may sound death knell for subs model from the Times Higher Education
January 9, 2011
Announcing Scientific Reports, a new open access publication Press Release from Nature Publishing Group In Open Educational Resources
January 27, 2011
$2-Billion Federal Program Could Be ‘Windfall’ for Open Online Learning from the Chronicle of Higher Education
January 24, 2011
New Job-Training and Education Grants Program Launched from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy blog |
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