SPARC

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. SPARC News: SPARC Team Grows
2. Partner News
3. Industry Roundup
4. Open Access News
5. Upcoming SPARC-ACRL Forum & Other Workshops

Former SPARC Executive Director Rick Johnson has agreed to consult with SPARC on its public policy agenda as a Senior Advisor to the coalition. He will build on efforts he began as SPARC's director, including advocacy for open access to government-funded scientific research and expansion of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. He can continue to be reached at rick@arl.org.

SPARC also welcomed Jennifer Heffelfinger as the new Communications Specialist. Jennifer will be responsible for communications support in all of the coalition’s endeavors, including member relations, media outreach, meetings and events, and Web communications. Prior to joining SPARC, Jennifer worked in trade publishing, health promotion, non-profit marketing, and scholarly publishing, spending her most recent years promoting humanities resources for electronic publishers that serve academic libraries. She's looking forward to connecting with members in the coming months, so please feel free to contact Jennifer through jennifer@arl.org or (202) 296-2296, ext. 121.

SPARC members are encouraged to apply their purchase commitment to support these worthwhile publications.

2a. SPARC Scientific Communities

BioOne

BioOne has appointed Susan Skomal as Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, starting in mid-October. Dr. Skomal has been a staff member of the American Anthropological Association since 1991, most recently as Director of Publications and leader of the Association’s transition from print to electronic publishing. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles and is a former Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, University College. She succeeds Heather Joseph, BioOne’s founding President, who assumed the position of Executive Director of SPARC in July.

2b. Leading Edge

BioMed Central
BioMed Central has launched a membership category called “Supporters membership,” an additional option which provides choice and flexibility in support of open access publishing. These members pay an annual fee based on the number of researchers and graduate students in the life sciences and medical sciences at their institution; this gives their researchers a 15% discount on the article processing charge when publishing in any of BioMed Central's journals. More information on the new membership category can be found on BioMed Central's website at http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/supportersmembership.

In other news, BioMed Central has appointed Matthew Cockerill to the post of Publisher. In his new role, he will be responsible for all aspects of BioMed Central's publishing activity. Matthew Cockerill has been involved with BioMed Central since its launch in 1999, serving first as Technical Director and later as Director of Operations. Cockerill succeeds Jan Velterop, who has joined Springer in the new position of Director of Open Access. (For more information, see http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2141229/
velterop-surprise-move-springer.)

 

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy International Association (SEPIA) has been created to support the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). SEPIA operates within Southeastern Library Network, Inc. (SOLINET) which is sponsored by Indiana University Libraries. SEPIA membership dues support free and open access to the SEP. SEPIA continues to collect membership dues from other libraries and library consortia worldwide. With a generous matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for every $3 paid in membership dues the NEH will match $1 - up to $500,000 total. Learn more about SEPIA at http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=3563. To register your commitment with SOLINET, go to http://www.solinet.net/survey/sep.htm. For a list of libraries already committed to the project see http://plato.stanford.edu/fundraising/commitments.html.

SPARC encourages its members to use funds allocated to their SPARC purchase commitment to help build the SEP protected fund, which guarantees that if SEP ever ceases to exist or operate, the membership dues plus a portion of earned interest will be returned to member libraries. SPARC’s alliance with SEP broadens its support for open access publication and continues its reach into the humanities.

In related news, SEP has partnered with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the United Kingdom, which will provide SEPIA membership to all institutions of higher education in the U.K.

2c. Alternatives

New Journal of Physics
New Journal of Physics has published the third of its three celebratory focus issues in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis. “Spacetime 100 Years Later,” edited by Richard Price and Jorge Pullin, presents reviews from some of the leading exponents in relativity and provides a historical perspective on how ideas about spacetime have evolved since then. All contributions to this issue are permanently publicly available and can be found at http://www.njp.org.

Possible Springer IPO

Springer Science and Business Media, the German scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publisher, is being prepared for a stock market IPO (initial public offering) in 2006 or 2007 by Candover and Cinven, according to a report in Information World Review. Springer is the world's second largest journal publisher after Reed Elsevier. Candover and Cinven bought Springer from German media empire Bertelsmann Group for Euro 1.5 billion in 2003. Following the acquisition of Springer, Candover and Cinven merged Springer with Kluwer Academic Publishing, which they had acquired in October 2002 from Wolters Kluwer.

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ACS-NIH Struggle Over PubChem Continues

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Chemical Society (ACS) do not appear to be close to finding a mutually acceptable agreement regarding the scope of the agency’s chemical database PubChem, according to published reports. ACS argues that PubChem will duplicate its Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Registry. ACS President William F. Carroll and NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni have exchanged written proposals outlining options, some of which would allow NIH to retain the intent of the database while leveraging existing private-sector chemical databases. However, a mutually acceptable solution has not yet been reached.

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OECD Stresses Importance of Open Access

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has completed a study on digital content in scientific publishing, the media industry's fastest growing sector with estimated revenue between US $7 and 11 billion in 2004. The OECD study analyzes scientific publishing’s new business models -- including open access publishing, open access archives and repositories, and subscription bundling and site licensing -- as well as their impacts on science and diffusion of knowledge, and the role of governments in enhancing access to publicly funded research. Findings indicate that scientific publishers have invested heavily in online publishing -- in 2003, 75% of scholarly journals were available online -- and that overall, the balance is shifting towards direct access to primary data sources, having major impacts on publishers. The report identifies the three major business models as the “Big Deal” aggregations, open access publishing on the author pays model, and open access archives and repositories.

The OECD also states its main policy recommendations, which underline the importance of enabling maximum access to findings from publicly funded research to maximize social returns on public investments. For more information: http://www.oecd.org/document/55/0,2340,en_2649_34487_35397879_1_1_1_1,00.html.

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SPARC Comments on RCUK Draft

SPARC, through the Open Access Working Group, has led U.S. support for the Research Councils United Kingdom (RCUK) Draft Position Statement on Research Outputs. The comments (http://www.arl.org/sparc/oa/RCUK.html) from the group commend the Research Councils’ decision to establish a policy designed to improve access to the results of publicly funded research, especially the RCUK requirement that grantees deposit final published articles, greatly enhancing the policy’s chances for successfully achieving these important goals and ensuring maximum participation.

In addition, the comments note the resemblance of the RCUK policy to the Public Access Policy of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which went in to effect on May 2, 2005 (http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm). It also recommends that the RCUK revise the section of the policy that specifically relates to the timing of the deposit of research materials, since -- because authors typically transfer copyright to publishers -- the copyright-holder at the time of deposit will usually be the publisher. The group encouraged the Research Councils to close this loophole before the final draft is finished to ensure that deposit does indeed occur at the desired point, at or around the time of publication.

The group also added its hope that the Research Councils will implement strategies to encourage the development of repositories in the U.K. in a manner that makes deposit available to all researchers.

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Boston Library Consortium, Inc. Adopts Agreement to Extend Author's Rights

The Boston Library Consortium's Board of Directors approved unanimously the adoption of the "Agreement to Extend Author's Rights," a document that gives authors and their employing institutions non-exclusive rights to use, distribute, and reproduce material in digital or print form for purposes connected with the author's academic and professional activities. The amendment also supports placement of material in institutional repositories. This tool will be used by member libraries to raise author awareness on their respective campuses and will provide an easy way for authors to secure their rights. The BLC will work with its members to encourage use of this document. The agreement, initially developed by MIT, a Consortium member, is available for downloading at the BLC website at http://www.blc.org.

Attendees at Brazil’s International Seminar on Open Access, held in parallel with the Ninth World Congress on Health Information and Libraries, passed the Salvador Declaration on Open Access: The Developing World Perspective. The Declaration, which is located at http://www.icml9.org/channel.php?lang=en&channel=91&content=439, urges governments to make open access a high priority in science policies including: requiring that publicly funded research is made available through open access; considering the cost of publication as part of the cost of research; strengthening the local open access journals, repositories and other relevant initiatives; and promoting integration of developing countries' scientific information in the worldwide body of knowledge.

SPARC/ACRL Forum at ALA Midwinter
Authors and Authority: Perspectives on Negotiating Licenses and Copyright

An author, a publisher, and an attorney will provide insights into the ways that the traditional relationship between author and publisher is changing: from individual author’s addenda included with publishing agreements to large-scale efforts from universities and organizations like Creative Commons. This forum will outline the current state of affairs and lay a path for the future that will better serve the public. Reservations are not required. For additional information, including time and place of the Forum, visit http://www.arl.org/sparc.

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Intellectual Property in Academia Online Workshop Series
Hosted by the Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Maryland
University College. Topics include E-Reserves and Copyright, the DMCA and the University, DRM in Higher Education, and Copyright in Academic Culture. For more information or to register, visit http://www.umuc.edu/odell/cip/ipa/index.html.

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CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI4)
October 20-22, 2005
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
For more information: http://cern.ch/oai4

The fourth workshop in the series, which began life as the Open Archives Initiative Workshop in 2001, is a forum for technical issues associated with scholarly communication.

Send corrections, comments and responses to Alison Buckholtz.

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