(Also published in the February-March 2007 edition of SPARC enews)
Editor's Note: BioOne was among the first publishing projects SPARC sponsored. After more than five years as a proven alternative to commercial, for-profit publishing, BioOne has repaid its SPARC investors 115%. The following piece from BioOne charts the success of the charter support program.
In the fall of 1999, SPARC member libraries received an important communiqué that heralded the development of a new, innovative online project. The headline read, "SPARC members: your support is urgently needed--please act now to enable a bold response to the serials crisis."
The project was BioOne, a new electronic aggregation of the full texts of bioscience research journals with an innovative business model. The product of collaboration between scientific societies, libraries, academe, and the private sector, BioOne was designed to offer an alternative to commercial publishing, enabling libraries to enhance their support of new research at a continued low cost for access. It also provided the means for not-for-profit journals from scholarly societies to remain independent, viable and visible in the emerging electronic publishing marketplace.
The original call for funding requested library support ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 - an amount proportional to a library's acquisitions budget. These were not intended as a gift, but rather as an investment. These "charter supporters" would receive a credit equivalent to at least 115% of their charter support to be applied to their future BioOne subscription fees, over a five or six year period. Libraries were also offered the opportunity to become BioOne "sponsors" by pledging an additional $5,000 or more that would not be eligible for a subscription credit.
The response from the academic library community was enthusiastic and generous. Eager for an electronic publishing alternative that might help transform scholarly communications, BioOne received a total of $688,000 in start-up funding from 123 institutions: $559,500 came from charter support with 25 of those same institutions pledging an additional $128,500 of sponsor support. Of these 123 total contributors, 117 were members of SPARC (67% of the then roster of 175 total members), and 22 were members of what is now the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA). Additionally, Amigos Library Services and OCLC provided substantial financial support to BioOne's development fund.
After six years, BioOne has returned about $672,000 in subscription credits ($112,500 over the initial support) to its charter supporters, effectively bringing this landmark program to a close. At this time BioOne gratefully recognizes the contributions of these institutions, without whom BioOne would not exist:
Arizona State University
Auburn University
Baylor University
California Digital Library
Columbia University
Dartmouth College
Harvard University
Iowa State University
Kansas State University
Laval University
Oklahoma State University
Syracuse University
Texas A&M University, College Station
Texas Tech University
University of Arizona
University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Connecticut
University of Kansas
University of Missouri-Columbia
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
University of New Mexico
University of Oklahoma
University of Pittsburgh
University of Texas at Austin
University of Utah
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vanderbilt University
BioOne Charter Supporters
American Museum of Natural History
Boston College
Bowdoin College Library
Brandeis University
Brigham Young University
Brown University Library
California Institute of Technology
Claremont Colleges
Colorado State University
Cornell University
Creighton University
Drexel University
Duke University
Eastern Michigan University
Eckerd College
Florida Atlantic University
Florida State University
Franklin and Marshall College
Georgetown University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Gettysburg College
Indiana University
Johns Hopkins University
Linda Hall Library
Louisiana State University
Macalester College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
McGill University
McMaster University
Michigan State University
Mississippi State University
Montana State University
North Carolina State University
Northeastern University
Oberlin College
Ohio State University
Ohio University
Oregon State University
Pennsylvania State University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rice University
Santa Clara University
Southern Illinois University
State University of New York at Albany
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Texas Christian University
Tufts University
University of Alabama at Birmingham
University of Alberta
University of Arkansas
University of British Columbia
University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Davis
University of California-Irvine
University of California-Los Angeles
University of California-San Diego
University of California-Santa Barbara
University of Chicago
University of Cincinnati
University of Delaware
University of Florida
University of Georgia
University of Guelph
University of Houston
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Iowa
University of Kentucky
University of Manitoba
University of Maryland at College Park
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
University of Miami
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Missouri-Kansas City
University of Nevada-Las Vegas
University of New Hampshire
University of North Carolina
University of Notre Dame
University of Puget Sound
University of Richmond
University of Saskatchewan
University of Tennessee
University of Toronto
University of Washington
University of Waterloo
University of Western Ontario
University of Windsor
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Utah Academic Library Consortium
Utah State University
Villanova University
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Tech
Wabash College
Washington State University
Washington University, St. Louis
Wayne State University
Wesleyan University
Western Michigan University
York University